When lights went out in Western North Carolina, solar and batteries helped some power up

After Helene shut down much of the power grid in Western North Carolina, solar panels provided a lifeline to dozens of communities.

That showed the value of alternative energy systems like solar with battery storage that can generate electricity independent of the power grid, said Dave Hollister, president and CEO of Weaverville-based Sundance Power Systems.

During times of disaster, Hollister said, “the reality is that more than ever it becomes a valuable commodity.”.”

Sundance was one of the local organizations that worked with the Footprint Project, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, to bring more than 45 portable solar arrays and battery systems to the region.

And Duke Energy’s microgrid in Hot Springs faced its first true test, one company officials say it passed with flying colors.

At the peak, more than 1.5 million North Carolina customers didn’t have power after Helene, with trees toppled onto power lines and flooding damaging vital infrastructure like substations.

Solar energy paired with battery storage gave some people a respite from the outages and the means to charge cell phones, take hot showers, and refrigerate insulin.

Will Heegard, the Footprint Project’s founder and operations director, said solar is a necessary alternative to the diesel-powered generators that tradtionally spring up throughout disaster zones.

“The longer that we live through these type of extreme or major disaster power outage events the more clear it is in general that relying on single source fossil fuel when the grid goes down is not the definition of resilience,” Heegard said.

Solar panels in Poplar

Setting up a reliable fuel supply for generators was a problem in the Mitchell County community of Poplar when Al Miller visited it days after Helene hit.

Miller had retired earlier this year from his role as director of disaster ministries for the N.C. Conference of the United Methodist Church, planning to build an addition on his home in the mountains.

After Helene struck, Miller took on the new role of director of disaster ministries for Helene for the Western N.C. Conference of the United Methodist Church.

At the NC Conference, Miller had worked with the Footprint Project to help secure funding for a solar-powered disaster response trailer that can help responders set up a command center or power a shelter location.

The trailer was used in the response to the Moore County power grid attacks after someone fired at two substations, leaving the county in the dark for days.

“Our society’s become so dependent upon our cell phone or battery powered tools or flashlights or whatever,” Miller said. “When the power goes, you can’t charge, you can’t do anything and this gives a lot of people a sense of relief that this thing’s there and it can help.”

When Miller learned that Heegard and the Footprint Project were working in Western North Carolina, he urged them to go to Poplar.

There, with the help of the Western NC Conference, the Footprint Project set up two systems. One, with 18 panels spread across a field and a Tesla battery, helped power a community center. The other helped power a well pump to that community center.

“They were amazed when the generators went off and the lights were still on. Fuel is such a precious resource up there,” Miller said.

The power returned to Poplar last week, Heegard said, and the Footprint Project pulled its solar panels and batteries away, for use in another disaster area.

The Footprint Project also has larger kits with batteries that can be moved with forklifts that can power trailers or mobile field offices or, in at least one instance in Western North Carolina, a fire station.

As of Thursday, the Footprint Project had 47 solar arrays spread across the region. The solar panels, which have typically been donated to the group, are laid down in a field and paired with a battery.

“Oftentimes when we’re dropping them off it’s the first time anyone in that community has seen a solar panel that’s not on a roof 30 to 40 feet away. Most people in the world have never stood and touched and moved around a commercial solar panel,” Heegard said.

Duke Energy’s microgrid

Microgrids are self-contained electrical networks that can generate power locally. In 2023, Duke Energy finished building one that pair a solar array and lithium-based battery storage facility to serve as the backup power source for Hot Springs, a Madison County town of about 550 people .

That microgrid was designed to provide 4 to 6 hours of power at up to 1 megawatt per hour, but Duke was able to stretch the duration to fully power part of Hot Springs day and night.

Due to heavy damage to buildings in Hot Springs and energy conservation efforts, the town’s energy demand was limited to 400 kilowatt hours during the day and 250 kilowatt hours at night, Bill Norton, a Duke spokesman, said in an email.

Noron classified the migrogrid’s performance as “very strong,” able to power the town’s downtown area including critical facilities like the fire department and a gas station starting on October 2 until the grid was restored October 8.

Norton continued, “The Hot Springs microgrid is a prototype facility designed to advance our knowledge of microgrid capabilities, and the project’s performance during Helene demonstrates that microgrids can improve resiliency under the right circumstances.”

Duke built the microgrid in Hot Springs because the town’s primary power line runs 10 miles through the Pisgah National Forest and had long experienced reliability challenges. Company officials said the microgrid was a cost-effective solution to building a second transmission line or substation.

Microgrids are an option for backup power in remote locations, Norton said, but he warned that they’re not perfect.

“They are not a silver bullet — if we had extensive cloud cover in the following days, or solar panel damage like we experienced in Florida, power would still be compromised. But in the right setting, it is a strong tool in the toolbox of reliability and resiliency solutions,” Norton wrote.

State officials have already expressed interest in more solar-fueled energy back up sources in this state’s mountains in years to come.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s Helene funding proposal suggested that North Carolina should ask the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Financing Program for $1 billlion to set up a program that would help fund microgrids near key communications infrastructure like cell phone towers.

The goal, the administration wrote in a damage and needs assessment released last week, would be to keep the infrastructure powered if the grid went down.

The Footprint Project’s origins

Heegard, a paramedic by training, started to think about the potential for solar power in disaster zones during a stint in Guinea responding to the ebola virus outbreak with the International Medical Corps. Heegard’s assignment was to power five refrigerators at health clinics to store blood samples so health officials could monitor spread of the virus.

Initially, the grant came with diesel-powered generators and would also involve figuring out how to supply diesel fuel for them for a year.

That supply chain was of particular concern to Heegard, who asked if the program could instead use five refrigerators powered by solar panels. While more expensive, he said, they offered a longer-term solution for the clinics than paying for diesel for a year.

After returning to the states and working on an ambulance again, Heegard couln’t stop thinking about what he saw as a clear opportunity.

“I was wondering why we weren’t doing it in our own backyard and started tinkering with solar and batteries in my backyard and we just started throwing them at local disasters,” Heegard said.

Heegard also noticed a kind of bitter irony that people were burning fossil fuels in the response to disasters that are often made more severe by climate change, which is primarily caused by burning such fuel.

“Right now, all of the response is gas generators being hauled in by gas trucks with gas fuel supply chains to deliver bottled water, which is a fossil fuel industry, to support FEMA trailers that are inefficiently designed and poorly built,” Heegard said.

Heegard said he is hoping for a different future, where portable microgrids can be spread across a state, used to limit fossil fuel consumption when power usage is highest but available for rapid deployment to the places they are most needed in the event of a disaster or a prolonged power outage.

To reach that point, the technology would also need to be standardized, with similar plugs available and ways to track how the systems are performing.

Right now, Heegard said, the Footprint Project has little more than an Apple AirTag to track where its systems are used and text messages with community members to check how they’re performing. And many emergency management officials are unaware of what the solar panel systems are capable of or how they compare with the more familiar generators.

“There’s just so much work to be done to make it easy for an emergency manager to use these tools well,” Heegard said.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.

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