GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Friday marks four weeks since Helene tore through the Upstate and western North Carolina, wiping out power for millions. While Duke Energy serves many customers in South Carolina, electric co-ops serve nearly double the amount of customers; and they are working to implement changes to make power lines more resilient.
"Reliability is one of the most crucial things that utilities deliver to its member customers," Jim Donahoo, spokesperson for Laurens Electric Cooperative, said.
Laurens Electric serves customers in Spartanburg and Greenville counties and is part of the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, which has 19 members. Six of those co-ops serve Upstate customers: Broad River Electric, York Electric, Laurens Electric, Newberry Electric, Blue Ridge Electric and Little River Electric. In total, the state co-ops have 77,000 miles of power lines.
"If you took all of the lines we maintain in South Carolina and just stretched them in a straight line, it would wrap around planet Earth three times," Avery Wilks, Vice President of Communications, said. "When we're talking about burying power lines, that is the scale we're talking about," he added.
Wilks explained while state co-ops are working to identify places to bury power lines, they're also installing redundant power systems.
"When you're talking about the power grid, when you have two lines that feed the same home or business, and one goes down and the other remains up, that is good redundancy," he said.
This is especially important for the neighborhoods many of these co-ops serve, which tend to be large stretches of the countryside and rural areas. That's why when these co-ops implement change, it has to make sense financially.
Upstate providers Broad River Electric Cooperative and York Electric Cooperative were recently awarded part of the $10.8 million issued to South Carolina companies to help them with various projects, including ways to locate, predict and prevent power issues in vulnerable communities.
Additionally, Laurens Electric said they're targeting older poles.
"Another important initiative in hardening our grid is identifying areas where we can change out wooden polls for steel polls," Donahoo said. "We have been doing that, but it has been a greater focus now since the recent storm."
All the downed poles from Helene will also be replaced.
"Power poles can be up for years, even decades, so anytime you replace an aging pole with a new one, you have made your grid more resilient," Wilks added.