By Will Atwater
When Hurricane Helene ripped through western North Carolina, it downed power lines, leaving tens of thousands of residents without electricity for days, even weeks.
Duke Energy reported “severe” infrastructure damage, including submerged substations, thousands of downed utility poles and fallen transmission towers. The company also noted that mudslides, flooding and blocked roads hampered efforts to quickly restore power.
At Duke Energy’s Marshall Substation in the town of Hot Springs, heavy rains and flooding forced the shutdown of the facility. But Hot Springs was more fortunate than most. In 2023, Duke Energy had installed a microgrid of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries to restore power quickly in case of emergency.
A microgrid is a self-contained electricity system that can operate independently of, or in coordination with, the main power grid. A common example is rooftop solar panels that supply electricity to homes, enabling residents to either disconnect from the main grid entirely or rely on it only as needed.
Hot Springs’ system, which can provide 100 percent of the town’s peak load and up to six hours of backup power, went live on Oct. 2, only five days after the storm. The microgrid operated continuously for the next 143.5 hours, providing power to the town’s center until power was restored to the area on Oct. 8.
The project, initially intended to be a proof of concept, worked to help the town get back online far ahead of its neighbors.
“It wasn’t as luxurious as a typical grid-powered home,” said Sara Nichols, energy and economic program manager for the Land of Sky Regional Council, a multi-county, local government organization. “It kept that town going when most people had nothing. It’s a huge success story.”
Hurricane Maria provides example
Rural and community health centers are a vital safety net for millions of Americans.
“As the largest primary care network in the nation, community health centers serve one in three people living in poverty — many in communities most impacted by environmental and climate hazards,” said Kyu Rhee, president and chief operating officer of the National Association of Community Health Centers, in a 2024 news release.
“Community health centers [are] not for profit organizations that receive a limited amount of federal support to provide care to anyone — [including] primary medical, dental, behavioral health, discounted Pharmacy [services] — and there in all 50 states and territories,” said Ben Money, from the association.
Money used to run the N.C. Community Health Center Association and knows the needs of this state well, including its extensive history of hurricanes disrupting power to crucial services. He pointed to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico’s power grid in 2017, as a turning point that accelerated efforts to equip health centers with solar-powered microgrids to improve disaster recovery.
Arturo Massol-Deyá, executive director of Casa Pueblo de Adjuntas, a nonprofit community organization based in Puerto Rico, described the conditions on the ground after Maria.
Credit: Casa Pueblo de Adjuntas
“The disaster in Puerto Rico was not the hurricane,” Massol-Deyá said. “It was the aftermath of the government’s [inability] to restore basic services and all the mismanagement of the situation.”
In the aftermath, Casa Pueblo used support from donors to help “democratize the energy grid” by installing solar and microgrid systems across communities — powering homes, schools, businesses and essential institutions.
“We have addressed health issues by building energy security,” he said, “because there’s a lot of people with chronic diseases — like high blood pressure, diabetes and respiratory issues — that require therapy and medication.”
Money echoed that point and emphasized the importance of keeping health clinics operational during and after emergencies.
“When community health centers are down, they can’t see patients,” Money said. “Those patients that need care end up going to the emergency room, where it costs an exorbitant amount of money to get something that could be delivered at a fraction of that cost at a community health center.”
“Each day a health center is closed due to a power outage puts the organization at a financial risk,” Money said, potentially leading to reduced services, staff layoffs or even permanent closure. By contrast, a solar microgrid system can lower operating costs, allowing centers to reinvest savings back into patient care and services.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy announced nearly $60 million in funding to support solar microgrid installations at rural community health centers. The investment is part of its Energy in Rural or Remote Areas program that’s managed by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.
The initiative targets rural health centers across the southeastern U.S., a region that experienced 474 weather-related power outages in 2022 — more than any other part of the country, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers.
The NACHC was also awarded a contract by the Department of Energy in 2024 to equip rural health clinics in North Carolina and other Southeastern states with solar microgrids. While the project is still in the planning stage, it is moving forward — despite federal funding cuts and increased scrutiny of Biden-era climate investments, Money said recently.
Advocating for microgrids
Long before Hurricane Helene battered western North Carolina, Sara Nichols had been working on ways to strengthen local power infrastructure in remote mountain locations — but she had struggled to gain traction with funders who denied multiple applications for support.
“We were working with designers and learning what projects needed — all the logistics,” said Nichols,whose organization serves four counties and 16 municipalities in western North Carolina.
Nichols said funders were hesitant to invest because the region lacked a history of major weather disasters.
“When I got a denial days after [Hurricane Helene] I was like, ‘Are you sure about that?’”
Despite being hundreds of miles from the coast and more than 2,000 feet above sea level, few expected the western North Carolina region to be so vulnerable. But Helene made one thing clear: No place is safe from severe weather.
As a result of Helene — and with the Hot Springs example in mind — Nichols and others have renewed their advocacy around communities — especially rural ones — to include microgrid technology in their resiliency planning.
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“I feel like we may have better chances now being able to tie things to our hurricane relief work,” Nichols said.
‘Emerging technology’
While the microgrid in Hot Springs delivered power in the wake of Helene, Duke Energy spokesperson Logan Stewart cautioned that microgrids are still an emerging — and costly — technology. “They’re not the best solution in every situation,” she said.
Duke Energy is investing in another strategy: self-healing technology, which automatically reroutes electricity from functioning service lines when an outage occurs.
“It’s kind of like a GPS in your car,” Stewart said. “If there’s an outage on your line, it’s going to just automatically reroute you to another line.
“We have [self-healing technology] integrated across about 60 percent of our grid in the Carolinas,” Sewart noted. “We’re going to continue to expand, but we have miles and miles of line, so it just takes [time] to do that.”
Stewart noted that self-healing technology is better suited for urban areas, where terrain is less of a challenge.
“Microgrids can be a solution,” she said, “but it depends on the community terrain, cost and several other factors. It’s something we’re going to continue to explore — because the performance during Helene was fantastic.”
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