Duke power grid can automatically detect, re-route power to keep the lights on for thousands during severe storms
Crews across the state worked Monday night and Tuesday to restore power for more than 280,000 customers throughout North Carolina.
Duke Energy communications manager Jeff Brooks said the outages weren’t as widespread as they could have been thanks to self-healing technology, which is bringing the lights back on faster.
“That technology can automatically detect a power outage when it happens, when a tree falls on a line, and then reroute power to other available lines to get service restored faster,” Brooks said of the self-healing technology.
On Monday, there were more than 80,000 Wake County customers without power at the peak of the storms.
Brooks said Duke Energy’s new technology is going to make a big difference during future storms.
“It doesn’t repair the outage,” Brooks said. “The outage still has to have a crew go out and do the repair, but it can reduce the number of customers that are impacted by that outage by as much as 75%.”
Brooks said it allows crews to restore power in less than one minute in some cases.
“I would think of it a lot like the GPS in your car that says, ‘Hey there’s an accident ahead, take a different road and I can get you back on your way,’” Brooks said. “The same thing is being done here with the grid.”
Brooks said crews were still working Tuesday afternoon to get power restored throughout the state. As of 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety shows there are 35,298 total outages in North Carolina, including 1,006 in Wake County.
Winds up to 60 mph on Monday night brought down trees, downed power lines, broken poles and left hundreds of thousands without power in North Carolina.
Raleigh resident Lindsey Bellefeuil lost power on Monday night during the storms.
“[The] first thing we saw was a bunch of wind, and then, we heard a big boom and that’s when a tree fell,” Bellefeuil said.
The street Bellefeuil lives on was without power.
“We’ve just been fortunate that it wasn’t worse,” Bellefeuil said.
Brooks said Duke Energy received reports of more than 500 sites where branches and debris damaged power lines. He said the technology should improve in the near future.
“That [self-healing] technology is only going to get better in the years ahead as we use more machine learning and other technologies to be able to add a new tool to the restoration toolbox,” Brooks said.
While technology is already making a difference, Brooks said damaged lines still need to be repaired the old-fashioned way.
“At the end of the day, there’s people out here working to get your power back up,” Brooks said. “We use technology to cut that in half or get customers back up, but it still takes human beings.”
