Much of Moore County still without power. Restoration will take days, Duke Energy says
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Moore County Power Outages
Thousands of people in Moore County, NC lost power for days in December 2022 after electrical substations were attacked. Here is the latest coverage from The News & Observer.
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More than 25,000 homes and businesses in Moore County remained without power Wednesday morning after the weekend attack on two substations, but Duke Energy says most will be fully restored by the end of the day.
Nearly all of Duke’s customers in Moore County — more than 45,000 — were thrown into darkness Saturday evening after someone shot into substations in Carthage and west of Pinehurst. The substations are the places where the voltage of power from Duke’s transmission lines is reduced before it can be distributed to homes and businesses.
Duke crews were fairly quickly able to repair some of the damaged equipment and get power flowing back through some local lines from the substations, said company spokesman Jeff Brooks. The company was able to restore power to about 7,000 customers late Sunday, Brooks said.
“We’re exploring some other options that may allow us to bring on a few thousand more over the next day or two,” he said Monday. “But ultimately the majority will take until as long as Thursday while we replace some equipment that is a little more complex to complete.”
The company said Tuesday that it anticipated having nearly all customers restored by midnight Wednesday, about 12 hours sooner than earlier estimates. Midday Wednesday, the company said it had repaired or replaced all the damaged equipment and was methodically bringing power back on.
Duke had all of the equipment it needed to fully restore the substations, Brooks said. But getting some of the larger pieces to Moore County, installed and functioning, took several days.
“The shots damaged multiple pieces of equipment in the substations,” he said. “Some of those are easier and quicker to replace. They’re smaller. They’re things that we have lots of on hand in the area. Others are specialized and can take a little longer to replace.”
The vast majority of power substations in the United States are outdoors, protected by fences, cameras and other security measures. The stations can withstand all types of weather, and utilities find it easier to keep them cool and to make repairs and replace equipment if they’re outdoors.
Saturday’s attacks occurred within an hour of each other. Brooks said the restoration process would have been much easier had only one substation been hit.
“It would give us much more options than we have today with the situation that we have,” he said. “Certainly losing one substation is challenging; losing two is even more so.”
Tracking power outages
The Duke Energy site listed 9,994 customers without power at noon Wednesday, out of 47,018 total customers served in the county.
Power was restored to the Carthage area on Tuesday and to several thousand other homes and businesses on Wednesday morning. According to a Duke Energy outage map, the remaining outages were concentrated in the Aberdeen, Southern Pines and Lakeview areas.
Need help?
▪ Charging stations: The Southern Pines Police Department has opened its C. Michael Haney Community Room to the public for charging electronic devices. Location: 450 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines.
▪ An emergency shelter opened at the Moore County Sportsplex at 4 p.m. Sunday, The Pilot newspaper reported. That is located off of N.C. 22 and U.S. 15-501 in Carthage.
Report outages
Report outages at readync.gov/stay-informed/power-outages or at outagereport.duke-energy.com/#/report-outage/home/find-account or by calling 800-769-3766.
This story was originally published December 4, 2022 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Much of Moore County still without power. Restoration will take days, Duke Energy says."
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