Usually, in Greensboro and Guilford County, when weather brings down a bunch of powerlines, it’s because of falling ice; however, on Sunday, Feb. 16, high winds wreaked havoc on the residents of Guilford County and others across North Carolina.

Though Duke Energy crews were working hard on recovering power all day Sunday – and the weather on Monday was nice – some customers in Greensboro were still being told it would be 8 p.m. on Monday night, Feb. 17, before their power would be restored.

Hank Henning, a former Guilford County commissioner who’s now the local district manager of government and community relations for Duke Energy, said that, while ice is often the main culprit in this area, high winds, such as those that struck on Sunday, can be equally as troublesome.

Henning said one special problem with high winds is that, as long as the winds remain strong, crews can’t safely work on the lines.

“When the winds are over 35 miles an hour, it hinders our ability to go up in the buckets,” Henning said.

Obviously, a working environment above the ground with sparking transformers and high-voltage power lines blowing around is an environment where great caution is needed.

Henning said that, after the storm hit, the fact that the winds remained high throughout the day hindered efforts to repair the lines – especially since the wind continued to create more outages.

“We had about 150 ‘events’ in Guilford County,” Henning said.

An event is a location where power goes out: It can be one isolated home on a rural street or 300 customers all on the same grid being affected by the same problem.

Henning said that, if your power does go out, it’s important to report it to the company – either by calling or doing so online. Some people think that automated computerized feedback always lets the company know, or that the company is aware of the issue regarding their house because their whole street lacks power and calls from neighbors have already alerted the company to their particular problem.

In many cases, that may be true, still, it’s always best to be sure Duke Energy knows there’s a power outage at your address.

In the wind event that hit on February 16, there was a particularly tough problem near the corner of West Cornwallis and North Elm Street in Greensboro.  As can be seen in the picture above, the top of a pole with a transformer snapped off and, due to the location of the pole – where four backyards intersected and the pole was surrounded by numerous backyard sheds – making repairs extremely difficult for Duke Energy workers.

On Monday afternoon, Duke Energy was still working on getting 142 affected customers’ power due to that snapped pole.

According to Henning, the power crews are very adept at getting power back up and running in cases where it’s just a power line problem; however, when there are major infrastructure issues – such as snapped poles – those are problems that can really be a bear.

Henning also said that, in addition to wind, ice is one of the most formidable foes for power companies.

He said Guilford County might see six inches of snow and not really see much problem, however, a quarter to a half inch of ice might bring down power lines left and right.

Henning added that, when there is snow, some issues are caused by drivers who crash into power poles and disrupt the power grid in that way.

Garrett Poorman, the lead communications manager of Duke Energy Corporate Communications Public Affairs and Jurisdiction Communications, said on Monday that a combination of lingering precipitation, saturated ground and gusty winds resulted in close to 11,000 power outages in Guilford County.

“Around 70,000 Duke Energy customers across the Carolinas were impacted during the event’s peak,” Poorman told the Rhino Times. “Our crews were ready to respond, and we notified customers of potential impacts in advance, encouraging them to prepare as well.”

He added that, as a large utility company, Duke Energy is well-equipped to support its service areas and the company has the ability to move crews to wherever outages occur.

“Duke Energy has a detailed storm response plan and was fully prepared to respond to this weather event,” he said. “Our meteorologists monitored weather conditions ahead of and during the storm to anticipate power outages and support outage response.”

The company also takes precautions when it can.

“Throughout the year, Duke Energy works on improvements to avoid outages and restore power faster when it does go out,” Poorman stated. “These improvements include tree trimming around lines, pole and line upgrades, and installing smart grid technology which can reroute power in the event of an outage.”

Last year, “smart grid technology” helped avoid more than 100,000 customer outages in Guilford County. He said that new tech has saved more than 260,000 hours of outage time.

“Over the last two years, we have doubled the number of customers who benefit from self-healing and automated restoration technologies in the Carolinas,” Poorman said.

About