CHARLOTTE — Duke Energy is taking strides to strengthen the Mecklenburg County power grid this summer in an effort to serve more customers when storms hit.
This week, Duke Energy crews have been working on South Boulevard installing, what they call, smart self-healing technology, which should make the power grid more resilient against outages.
“Customers get a more seamless experience for them, and that’s what the goal of our grid improvement work is,” Duke Energy spokesperson Logan Stewart told Channel 9’s Eli Brand.
Stewart says the equipment keeps power on even if the line it is attached to is experiencing an outage.
It can automatically connect any building attached to it to a different line that is still working within seconds in order to keep the lights on. This technology is especially useful during storms, like Helene, which ravaged the Carolinas almost a year ago.
“Duke Energy serves Asheville, so that was honestly for our company one of the biggest challenges that we’ve ever faced,” Stewart said. “A lot of the work we’re doing here in Mecklenburg County and many counties we serve is making our grid more reliable.”
Stewart said about two-thirds of Mecklenburg County is now served by the technology. Targeted work in certain areas has been done this past year to make the grid more resilient for hurricane season.
“What has happened in the past, like Helene and some of that, is future data,” Stewart said. “What do we expect? What does our modeling show us? What does our forecasting show us? And so, we will pinpoint areas of Charlotte that need necessary improvements.”
Last year, the technology helped prevent more than 160,000 outages — 80% of those were during major storms, Stewart said.
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