Duke Energy’s subsidiaries are preparing trucks, equipment, and thousands of workers in preparation for Hurricane Helene’s expected arrival on Thursday or Friday this week, and subsequent “widespread” power outages expected to follow.
Duke Energy Florida is readying 8,000 workers, and Duke Energy Carolinas said more than 10,000 workers will be prepped and staged before the storm hits. Workers include lineworkers, tree trimmers, damage assessors and support personnel.
“Helene is a large and fast-moving storm that has the potential to deliver torrential rain and tropical-storm-force gusts to the western half of the Carolinas,” said Jason Hollifield, Duke Energy’s storm director in the Carolinas. “We’re closely monitoring the projected path of the storm and strategically moving people and equipment to ensure we’re ready to respond to power outages.”
In Florida, trucks will begin arriving at Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg College Tarpon Springs, The Villages and Suwannee Valley Farmer’s Market on Wednesday afternoon. Staging locations are positioned along the outside of Helene’s projected path, but as close to the impacted areas as possible. The company is also sending crews from Duke Energy’s Midwest operations in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.
On Wednesday morning, former Tropical Storm Helene was upgraded to a hurricane. It could reach Category 3 status, and is expected to have a wind swath of over 400 miles wide, NBC News reports. As of 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph. Forecasters say that abnormally high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are increasing the storm’s energy.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an above-normal hurricane season with 17-25 named storms this season, including 8-13 hurricanes, and 4-7 of those becoming major hurricanes. This year’s forecast predicts around 30% more storm activity compared to the number of storms predicted last year.
With the projected increase of storms on its mind, Duke Energy has been strengthening the electric grid against severe weather, upgrading thousands of poles and wires to increase reliability and better withstand storms, strategically placing outage-prone lines underground in some areas, managing trees and vegetation, and installing smart, self-healing technology that can automatically detect power outages and quickly restore power when an outage occurs.
The utility claims that in 2023, self-healing technology helped to avoid more than 1.5 million customer outages, saving more than 3.6 million hours of total lost outage time across the company’s six-state service area. Nearly 50% of Duke Energy customers are now impacted by self-healing and automated restoration technologies, more than double the number of customers served by smart restoration systems two years ago.
The company also recently completed a multi-year modernization project to construct seven new grid control centers across its six-state service area. These facilities are meant to help manage crews and outage response after storms, and can monitor millions of data points across the power grid in real time.
Duke Energy maintains more than 17,000 employees and contractors ready to respond to outages when storms strike, and partnerships with peer utilities provide additional resources to shorten response times.
