Volunteers bring Hurricane Helene's disaster zone with solar power

Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Helene downed power lines and washed out roads all over North Carolina's mountains, the constant din of a gas-powered generator is getting to be too much for Bobby Renfro.

It’s difficult to hear the nurses, neighbors and volunteers flowing through the community resource hub he has 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 isn’t an option. This generator runs a refrigerator holding insulin for neighbors with diabetes and powers the oxygen machines and nebulizers some of them need to breathe.

The retired railroad worker worries that outsiders don’t understand how desperate they are, marooned without power on hilltops and down in “hollers."

“We have no resources for nothing,” Renfro said. “It's going to be a long ordeal.”

About 23,500 of the 1.5 million customers that lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can't recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.

Crews from all over the country and even Canada are helping Duke Energy and local electric cooperatives with repairs, but it's slow going in the dense mountain forests, where some roads and bridges are completely washed away.

“The crews aren’t doing what they typically do, which is a repair effort. They’re rebuilding from the ground up," said Kristie Aldridge, vice president of communications at North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.

Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.

Little electricity

Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate.

Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building.

Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, "seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity.”

The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the non-profit is sourcing 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 2018 in New Orleans with a mission of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of emergency responses.

Helene’s destruction is so catastrophic, however, that Swezey said this work is more about supplementing generators than replacing them.