Hurricane Helene — Day One

The Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tives of SC

South Carolina’s elec­tric coop­er­a­tives were hit extreme­ly hard by this morning’s storm, and the restora­tion process for wide swaths of our state is going to take days, even weeks, not hours.

Hur­ri­cane Helene knocked out the pow­er for about 425,000 South Car­oli­na coop­er­a­tive con­sumers this morn­ing, a lit­tle less than half of our statewide sys­tem. About 380,000 of those con­sumers were still with­out pow­er as of about an hour ago.

• This storm snapped at least sev­er­al hun­dred poles, yanked down lines and dam­aged not just dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, but com­plex trans­mis­sion lines and oth­er crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.
• Almost 50 trans­mis­sion lines that sup­ply our con­sumers were out this morn­ing. Those are the big ones that serve as the inter­states of our pow­er grid.
• As a result, dozens of sub­sta­tions and deliv­ery points – which func­tion like inter­state exits for those major trans­mis­sion lines – were knocked out of com­mis­sion.

For some of our co-ops, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the Upstate and along South Carolina’s west­ern bor­der, our folks on the ground say this was the most destruc­tive storm they have ever seen.

• Some of those folks have worked at their coop­er­a­tives for more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence. They worked through the 2014 ice storm. They worked through Hur­ri­cane Hugo in 1989. And this is the worst they’ve ever seen.
• A hand­ful of our co-ops saw almost their entire sys­tem – up to 98% of their con­sumers — go offline as the storm wreaked hav­oc on our infra­struc­ture.

We are still ear­ly in the process of assess­ing all the dam­age, but we know it’s sub­stan­tial. It’s very bad.

Our co-ops have crews work­ing across the state to restore pow­er, and we have called in help from co-ops in oth­er states.

• We expect to be work­ing around the clock this week­end and into next week to restore pow­er.
• It’s impor­tant to keep in mind that our co-ops serve some of the most rur­al areas and the most rugged ter­rain in our state.
• In order to safe­ly restore pow­er, our crews have to inspect every mile of line lead­ing to your homes and busi­ness­es before we re-ener­gize them.
• To do that, our line crews have had to cut through downed trees and blocked road­ways just to reach the infra­struc­ture that needs repair­ing or replac­ing.
• Our mate­ri­als and equip­ment sup­pli­ers are hav­ing to do the same thing to reach our line crews.
• It takes time to do this safe­ly.
  • Just this morn­ing, we’ve had trees fall on at least two trucks that were out work­ing to restore pow­er to our sys­tem.
  • The work­ers were OK in both cas­es, but those inci­dents under­score why restor­ing pow­er after a storm of this mag­ni­tude takes time.
• We are still ear­ly in the restora­tion process.

We are going to work and work and work until the pow­er is back on, and we need your help. Please be patient, and please be under­stand­ing with the folks who are out work­ing and doing every­thing they every­thing we can to restore pow­er to South Car­oli­na.