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 such as solar with battery storage that can generate electricity off the grid, said Dave Hollister, president and CEO of Weaverville-based Sundance Power Systems.
In times of disaster, Hollister said, “the reality is that it becomes more of a valuable commodity than ever.”
Sundance was one of several local organizations that partnered with the Footprint Project, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, to bring more than 45 portable solar panels and battery systems to the region.
And Duke Energy’s microgrid in Hot Springs underwent its first real test, and company officials say it passed with flying colors.
At its peak, more than 1.5 million North Carolina customers lost power after Helene, with trees falling on power lines and flooding vital infrastructure such as substations.
Solar energy combined with battery storage gave some people a reprieve from the outages and the ability to charge cell phones, take hot showers and store insulin in the refrigerator.
Will Heegard, founder and chief operating officer of the Footprint Project, said solar power is a necessary alternative to the diesel generators that traditionally pop up in disaster areas.
“The longer we experience these types of extreme or major power outages, the clearer it becomes in general that relying on single-source fossil fuels when the grid goes down is not the definition of resilience,” Heegard said.
Solar panels in Poplar
Establishing a reliable fuel supply for generators was an issue in the Mitchell County community of Poplar when Al Miller visited days after Helene struck.
Miller had retired earlier this year as director of disaster ministries for the NC Conference of the United Methodist Church, and planned to build an addition to his mountain home.
After Helene struck, Miller took on the new role of director of disaster ministries for Helene for the Western NC Conference of the United Methodist Church.
At the NC conference, Miller had worked with the Footprint Project to secure funding for a solar-powered disaster response trailer that could help first responders set up a command center or power a shelter.
The trailer was used in response to the attacks on Moore County’s power grid after someone shot at two substations, leaving the county in the dark for days.
“Our society has become so dependent on our cell phone, battery powered tools, flashlights or whatever,” Miller said. “If the power goes out you can’t charge, you can’t do anything and this gives a lot of people a sense of relief that this thing is here and it can help.”
When Miller heard that Heegard and the Footprint Project were working in Western North Carolina, he urged them to go to Poplar.
There, the Footprint Project, with help from the Western NC Conference, has set up two systems. One, with 18 panels spread across a field and a Tesla battery, helped power a community center. The other helped run a well pump to that community center.
“They were surprised when the generators went off and the lights were still on. Fuel is such a precious resource there,” Miller said.
Power returned to Poplar last week, Heegard said, and the Footprint Project removed the solar panels and batteries 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 case in Western North Carolina, a fire station.
As of Thursday, the Footprint Project had 47 solar panels spread across the region. The solar panels, which are usually donated to the group, are placed in a field and connected to a battery.
“When we deliver them, it’s often the first time someone in that community has seen a solar panel that isn’t on a roof 30 to 40 feet away. Most people in the world have never stood around, touched and moved around a commercial solar panel,” says Heegard.
Duke Energy’s microgrid
Microgrids are self-contained electrical networks that can generate energy locally. In 2023, Duke Energy completed construction of a solar array and lithium-based storage facility that would serve as a backup power source for Hot Springs, a city in Madison County with a population of about 550.
That microgrid was designed to provide power for 4 to 6 hours at up to 1 megawatt per hour, but Duke was able to extend 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 city’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 city center, including critical facilities such as the fire brigade and a gas station, starting on October 2 until the network was restored on 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 conditions.”
Duke built the microgrid in Hot Springs because the city’s primary power line runs 10 miles through the Pisgah National Forest and has long had reliability problems. Company officials said the microgrid was a cost-effective solution for building a second transmission line or substation.
Microgrids are an option for backup power in remote locations, Norton said, but he cautioned that they are not perfect.
“They are not a panacea: if we had a lot of cloud cover in the next few days, or damage to solar panels, as we experienced in Florida, the power supply would still be at risk. But in the right setting, it is a powerful tool in the toolbox of reliability and resiliency solutions,” Norton wrote.
State officials have already expressed interest in more solar energy as backup sources in this state’s mountains in the coming years.
Governor 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 billion to create a program that would help finance microgrids near important communications infrastructure such as mobile phone masts.
The goal, the government wrote in a damage and needs assessment released last week, would be to keep the infrastructure powered if the power grid goes down.
The origins of the Footprint Project
A paramedic by training, Heegard began thinking about the potential for solar energy in disaster areas during a stay in Guinea in response to the Ebola virus outbreak at the International Medical Corps. Heegard’s assignment was to power five refrigerators in health clinics to store blood samples so health officials could monitor the spread of the virus.
Initially it involved a subsidy for diesel generators, which also involved figuring out how we could supply them with diesel fuel for a year.
That supply chain was of particular interest to Heegard, who asked if the program could use five refrigerators powered by solar panels instead. Although more expensive, he said, they offered a longer-term solution for the clinics than paying for diesel for a year.
After returning to the United States and working on an ambulance again, Heegard continued to think about what he saw as a clear opportunity.
“I wondered 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 noted a kind of bitter irony that people burned fossil fuels in response to disasters often made more severe by climate change, which is caused mainly by burning such fuels.
“Right now the only response is for gas generators to be brought 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 hopes for a different future, where portable microgrids can be spread across a state, used to reduce fossil fuel consumption when power consumption is highest, but available for rapid deployment where they are needed most in the event of a disaster or prolonged power outage.
To get to that point, the technology would also need to be standardized, with comparable plugs available and ways to track how the systems are performing.
Right now, Heegard says, the Footprint Project has little more than an Apple AirTag to track where its systems are used and text messages with community members to monitor how they’re performing. And many emergency officials are unaware of what the solar panel systems are capable of, or how they compare to more well-known generators.
“There is still so much work to be done to make it easy for an emergency manager to use these tools properly,” Heegard said.
This story was produced with funding 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 has full editorial control over the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription. You can do that here.
