Volunteers bring solar power to Hurricane Helene’s disaster zone
BAKERSVILLE, N.C. — Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Helene downed power lines and washed away roads in the North Carolina mountains, the constant roar of a gas-powered generator becomes too much for Bobby Renfro.
It’s hard to hear the nurses, neighbors and volunteers milling through the community center he set up in a former church for his neighbors in Tipton Hill, a crossroads in the Pisgah National Forest north of Asheville. Much worse is the cost: He spent $1,200 to buy it and thousands more on fuel that volunteers drive in from Tennessee.
Turning off their only power source is not an option. This generator runs a refrigerator containing insulin for neighbors with diabetes and powers the oxygen machines and nebulizers some of them need to breathe.
The retired railway worker worries that outsiders don’t understand how desperate they are, stranded on hilltops without power and in ‘screams’.
“We don’t have the resources for anything,” Renfro said. “It will be a long ordeal.”
More than 43,000 of the 1.5 million customers who lost power in western North Carolina still had no electricity Friday. poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medications cold, power medical equipment, or pump well water. They can’t charge their phones or apply for federal disaster assistance.
Crews from across the country and even Canada are helping Duke Energy and local electric cooperatives with repairs, but things are moving slowly in the dense mountain forests, where some roads and bridges have been completely washed away.
“The crews are not doing what they normally do: repair work. They are rebuilding from the ground up,” said Kristie Aldridge, vice president of communications at North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.
Residents who can get gas and diesel generators depend on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and the drive can be long. Generator fumes pollute and can be fatal. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.
Now more help is coming. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and freer to operate. Volunteers from the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company provided a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building.
Renfro hopes his community can take some comfort and security, “seeing and knowing that they have some electricity.”
The Footprint Project is expanding its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has so far deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can draw water from the air to 33 locations, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.
With donations from equipment and solar installation companies and equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is purchasing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems, and even industrial-scale solar generators known as ‘Dragon Wings ‘.
Will Heegaard and Jamie Swezey are the husband-and-wife team behind Project Footprint. Heegaard founded it in New Orleans in 2018 with a mission to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from emergency response efforts. However, Helene’s destruction is so catastrophic that Swezey said this work is more about replenishing generators than replacing them.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Swezey said as she stared at a whiteboard with written lists of requests, volunteers and equipment. “It’s all hands on deck with everything you can use to power whatever you need.”
Down near the highway in Mars Hill, a warehouse owner let Swezey and Heegaard set up operations and sleep inside. They get up every morning to review emails and text messages from around the region. Requests for equipment range from individuals needing to power an oxygen machine at home to makeshift clinics and community centers distributing supplies.
Local volunteers help. Asheville glassblowers Hayden Wilson and Henry Kovacs arrived this week in a pickup and trailer to make deliveries. Two installers from Asheville-based solar company Sundance Power Systems followed in a van.
It took them more than an hour on winding roads to reach Bakersville, where the Julie Wiggins Community Center in its driveway supports about 30 area families. It took many of her neighbors days to reach her, picking their way through fallen trees. Some were so desperate that they put their insulin in the creek to keep it cold.
Panels and a battery from Footprint Project now power her small refrigerator, a water pump and a Starlink communications system she set up. “This is a game changer,” Wiggins said.
The volunteers then drove to Renfro’s hub in Tipton Hill before making their final stop at a Bakersville church where two generators were running. Other places are much more difficult to reach. Heegaard and Swezey even tried to find out how many portable batteries a mule could carry up a mountain and arranged for some to be dropped by helicopters.
They know that there is a lot at stake after Heegaard volunteered in Puerto Ricowhere the death toll from Hurricane Maria rose to 3,000 as some mountain communities were left without power for 11 months. Duke Energy crews have also been restoring infrastructure in Puerto Rico, using tactics learned there, such as using helicopters to install new utility poles, utility spokesman Bill Norton said.
The hardest customers to help may be people whose homes and businesses are too damaged to connect, which is why the Footprint Project will remain in the area as long as they are needed, Swezey said.
“We know there are people who will need help long after the power returns,” she said.
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