The Category 4 hurricane left 50 dead and caused $1.5 billion in damage statewide when it struck the Southeast in September 2024. It also left hundreds of thousands without power, some of them for days, after Helene’s winds knocked down trees and power poles across large chunks of the state.
The Palmetto State’s utilities are thinking back to those days as they prepare for the upcoming hurricane season. And power companies across the state say they are ready.
“We learn from every event and Helene offered many opportunities to incorporate into our planning for and response to the next significant storm Mother Nature sends our way,” said Duke Energy spokesman Ryan Mosier.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Dominion Energy has 25 sites across the state where the provider stations crews and materials so that they can respond as quickly as possible to outages or other damage from outbreaks of dangerous weather.
At Dominion’s central storeroom in Cayce, the power company collects thousands of supplies, from replacement transformers to power poles, that can be rushed out whether storms have knocked out power, or some piece of its distribution system has succumbed to regular wear and tear.
Elsewhere, South Carolina’s electric cooperatives formed Cooperative Electric Energy Utility Supply in 1974 to provide members with material. In recent years, they have cooperated with a similar group in Virginia in case more replacement parts are ever needed, even though South Carolina’s utility supply has built up around $60 million worth of inventory.
“In the last two years, we’ve doubled our capacity,” said Bob Paulling, CEO of Mid-Carolina Electric Co-op. “We bought extra materials in July and August. Poles and transformers don’t spoil.”
OUTAGES AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Utilities now use specialized devices to monitor for outages remotely, and can dispatch repair crews more efficiently when they register a problem. The system uses sensors to detect faults, notify operators at control centers, and can quickly isolate the problem area and reroute power to minimize disruption.
“If an outage gets called in, we have a real-time vantage point to see what’s going on,” Ashley said.
Even before last year’s hurricane hit, Duke was making its system more resilient.
“We are strengthening the grid, increasing reliability and making our infrastructure more resistant to outages from severe weather,” Mosier said. “Improvements include upgrading poles and wires, converting wood poles to stronger steel in hard to access areas, increasing protections around equipment in flood-prone areas, strategically placing outage-prone lines underground, and installing smart, self-healing technology that can automatically detect power outages and reroute power to reduce outage time or avoid an outage all-together.”
At one point, 54% of Dominion’s coverage area in the Palmetto State, or 446,000 customers, were without power during Hurricane Helene. And they were far from the only provider dealing with such widespread outages as the storm passed over the state.
ASKING FOR HELP
Forecasters warn this year could be similar. The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be above-normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, thanks to warmer-than-average ocean temperatures and atmospheric conditions that will be beneficial to storm formation. Storm-watchers could see up to 19 named storms and five major hurricanes before the season ends at the end of November.
The state’s utilities work closely with state agencies to coordinate their response to an oncoming storm, with someone working on site at the headquarters of the S.C. Emergency Management Division ahead of and during the storm striking South Carolina.
“We had a lot of trees down on roadways, and in order to access those areas, we needed a strong partnership” with the help of fast-acting crews from the S.C. Department of Transportation, Ashley said.
When storms threaten to overwhelm South Carolina utilities’ ability to respond to outages, they can call on crews from other states to come in to assist.
Dominion, a member of the Southeastern Electric Exchange, deployed 1,200 personnel from across the Southeast.
During Hurricane Helene, co-op linemen’s wives would take the out-of-state crew’s laundry home and do it in their own washing machines, Paulling said.
Some of those crews traveled pretty far to assist South Carolinians in their time of need. Paulling recalled one crew from Iowa working in South Carolina listening to the Iowa-Iowa State college football game on the radio.
“One guy was called out by name on the radio, and he had a big head the rest of the time here,” he said.
ADDITIONAL COSTS
Utilities don’t tend to budget for the additional costs they take on responding to hurricanes. Paulling said the electric coops had taken on $12 million in debt to restore the damage done by Helene, “and we’re praying and hoping FEMA will reimburse us.”
“There’s an expense in bringing crews in,” he added. “Once they head out, they’re on our nickel, so we’ve got to keep that in mind. It can cost you an extra half-a-million just because you brought them in. ... You have to get a decent place for them to stay that’s clean and comfortable, and provide three meals a day. They’ll eat breakfast and supper here, but in the middle of the day food has to be delivered in the field.”
Dominion, meanwhile, spent more than $100 million to repair and replace damaged equipment after Helene.
“We didn’t simply repair our system,” said spokesman Matthew Long. “It was a rebuild for many areas.”
CLEAR COMMUNICATION
One lesson utilities took from Helene was the need to be able to communicate quickly and directly with the public during an emergency.
At one point, Paulling put out a video on social media standing in front of the co-op’s pole supply to disprove rumors that they had run out. It’s part of a more public-facing role utilities are taking on. Part of that effort is communicating more expected restoration times when the lights go out.
“We have got to figure that out, because we basically shied away from that for a long time,” he said, because people would hold it against them if they didn’t get the power back on before the stated time. “But people need that. They need to know whether they need to go find a hotel room.”
Other utilities emphasized educating customers about what they can do to better protect themselves during a storm.
“Santee Cooper also holds an annual Hurricane Forum in Myrtle Beach for businesses, local governments and other organizations, with speakers who can share knowledge and resources to help prepare for, respond and recover from hurricanes,” said Emily Tyner, a spokesperson for the state-owned utility. “We also have a team that conducts power line safety demonstrations throughout the year for school and community groups.”
Communication with the public is increasingly important for utilities so that users understand why utilities can have such a challenge getting things back up and running.
“The biggest thing is people complain when there’s not a single limb down in their yard, but you might have a powerline or transmission line down,” Paulling said. “At one point [during Helene] we only had five substations energized. Sixteen didn’t have any power. So when you say, ‘Why isn’t my power back on?,’ it can be hard for people to understand.”
While some customers were understandably upset to be without power for so long, work crews also found many people were sympathetic and supportive of the crews working long hours in trying conditions to get the lights back on.
Ashley remembers linemen coming back in after a long shift to find hand-written letters that schoolchildren had sent in to thank them for all the hard work they were putting in during Helene’s aftermath.
“Words have an impact,” Ashley said. “That rejuvenated and refueled them for the duration.”
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