The Electric Cooperatives of SC
Hurricane Helene was a catastrophic storm with historic, Hugo-level impacts in South Carolina.
South Carolina electric cooperative crews are working around the clock this weekend to restore power, but given the severity of the destruction in Helene’s wake, this process is going to take several more days for large swaths of the state.
- For much of the western half of South Carolina, it will take at least a week before power is completely restored.
We’ve made progress.
- We’re down to about 282,000 outages for co-op members statewide, down from a peak of 425,000 Friday morning. (As of 1 p.m. 9/28/24)
- Helene knocked out power for about half the co-op system Friday morning.
- A little less than half of our substations across the state remain offline – about 80 in total – but we have made progress in bringing that number down. (as of 12:30 p.m. 9/28/24)
- Every one of our co-ops has line crews out in the field.
- Some of our co-ops on the eastern half side of the state, including Horry Electric and Berkeley Electric, are finishing up their restoration work and sending crews to help fellow co-ops in the western half of the state.
- We are getting help from other states that were less affected by Helene.
- About 50 line workers from Alabama arrived on Friday.
- More help is on the way: 50 workers from Ohio and about 20 from Virginia are coming this weekend.
For co-ops in the Upstate and along the western border of South Carolina, this is not a simple restoration job. This is a rebuild of our electric system.
- Much of our state hasn’t seen this level of damage since Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
- Some parts of the state are seeing even more damage than Hugo left.
- It may be hard to fathom since Saturday has been so warm and clear, but there are still so many trees down and roads blocked in parts of the state, particularly the Upstate, we still haven’t been able to completely assess the damage yet.
- But we know dozens of major transmission lines – which act like the interstates of our power grid – were knocked out of commission.
- Dozens more substations and delivery points – which are like interstate exits – were knocked offline and still remain offline as well.
- At least 1,400 cooperative power poles were snapped by this storm and need to be replaced. And we are still counting.
- It takes about 3-4 hours, on average, for a four-man to replace a broken pole. Replacing three poles over a 12-hour shift is a full day’s work for a single crew. Replacing four is an unusual and tremendous accomplishment.
- We hear from our materials supplier, CEEUS, that our co-ops’ need for materials and supplies is about 10 times more than we see in typical storms.
- This storm will require about 4-6 months of our usual supply of overhead line materials – about the same volume of material as we needed to respond to Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
- Our supplier is sending out about 15 tractor trailer loads of material daily.
- That includes wood crossarms (those T’s you see at the top of power poles), crossarm braces, overhead transformers, insulators, cutouts, arrestors, fuses, hot line clamps and more.
An extended power outage is a significant inconvenience, and we care deeply about how this affects our consumers.
- The people working on fixing this damage live in these communities. Many of them are working all day and then coming home to houses that are damaged or without power. They get it.
- A lineman at Black River Electric Cooperative had his house burn to the ground Friday night. He lost everything, and he is coming back to work on Sunday. He gets it.
- We have never been more dependent on electricity than we are today.
- We get it, and we want to get the power on as soon as possible.
Our crews are working hard to address this damage, but we’re facing significant challenges out in the field.
- Due to the severity of the damage, some of our critical infrastructure will need to be rebuilt and replaced rather than fixed. That work is more time consuming.
- Some of our co-ops have had their communications systems knocked offline, which has made the challenge of coordinating a storm response more difficult.
- Getting out-of-state crews has been a challenge.
- Before the storm hit, other states were reluctant to commit to sending us crews because they didn’t know how they would be impacted.
- After the storm hit, there are a lot of states hurting and in need of crews.
- Just as we’re scrambling to secure crews from out of state to come help, we’re scrambling to secure fuel for our co-op trucks and housing for line crews that are coming into the state to help.
We understand the need to work fast, but it’s also critical that safety be our top concern.
- Even after the storm has passed, there are dangers associated with restoring electric service after a destructive storm. Mitigating those dangers takes time.
- We’ve had trees fall on two trucks that were out working for co-ops.
- One tree fell across a Broad River Electric truck while the line worker was in it. He was taken to the hospital, and he’s OK, but it really shook him up.
We need your help. Please be patient as we undertake this work. Please bear with us as we do the work of restoring power to South Carolina.