Duke Energy: Most power should be back by Friday, but grid needs to be rebuilt

As of Tuesday afternoon, roughly 1.6 million Duke Energy customers in the Carolinas have had their power restored, but more than half a million outages remain.

Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks tells Channel 9 the utility expects to restore most of those remaining outages by Friday night, though some of the hardest hit regions are still inaccessible.

Now that water is receding in the west, many crews are just starting to see the extent of the damage to the electric grid infrastructure after Tropical Storm Helene.

“When we look at the remaining outages that we’re dealing with, which are significant, about 50 percent of those are going to be rebuild [and] reconstruct as opposed to repair,” Brooks said.

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Many substations were submerged in feet of water and battered with debris. Substations are needed to take high-voltage power from the transmission lines and convert that voltage to a level we can use in our homes and neighborhoods.

Brooks said the floodwaters left behind irreparable damage, requiring new equipment or in some cases a complete rebuild before the power can be restored. Duke Energy does not yet have an estimate on how long that could take.

To get power back online in the meantime, the utility is bringing in mobile substations to replace the broken equipment temporarily. Brooks said Duke crews are similarly looking at temporary fixes to power line infrastructure to prioritize restoration as quickly as possible.

“We’re looking at ways to reroute power to other lines and tie together lines that we can then supply an area that otherwise wouldn’t get power until the full job is done,” he said. “When you hear about people trying to get water trying to get supplies power is at the core of a lot of that.”

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Much of the region is still inaccessible and Brooks said each restoration project is getting more and more difficult.

“In one case we’re working on a substation where we’re going to build a temporary substation equipment there but we’re going to have to rebuild the road just to get the equipment there,” he said.

Brooks said some of the hardest hit areas like Chimney Rock will likely require a much larger rebuild before power returns.

“If you look at those areas, there’s not a lot of equipment left in some of those stations,” he said.

(VIDEO: How you can help those impacted by Hurricane Helene)