Hot Springs residents, businesses after extended power outages: 'We need a plan'

HOT SPRINGS - After high winds left businesses and residents within the town limits without power for much of the weekend April 1-3, the Hot Springs Town Board was forced to postpone its April 3 meeting.

Instead, the board met April 4 at City Hall, and naturally, one of the main points of discussion was the power outages.

Businesses within the town limits are powered by Duke Energy. Last March, Duke representatives held a meeting at the Hot Springs Elementary gym to discuss the corporation's solar farm/microgrid, located on South Andrews Avenue.

In that meeting, Jason Handley, general manager of Duke Energy's Distributed Energy Group, said the Hot Springs inverter-based microgrid was designed to limit response times and to honor the company's commitment to fewer emissions.

"What we're trying to do is make that outage really short - five minutes, something like that," Handley said. "To safely do this, we have to isolate the grid upstream. So, that'll take us about two to three minutes to do. That is the goal."

According to members of the board, the power outages lasted for much longer than five minutes.

Abby Norton and Jeremy Trantham, a maintenance technician with the town, said the power first went out around 7 p.m. April 1. The microgrid carried the power that night for roughly two to three hours before service was once again interrupted around 10 p.m. April 1.

Trantham said it remained out until roughly 3 p.m. April 2. On that day, the microgrid carried the town's power until roughly 9 p.m. On April 3, the power came on again at roughly

Trantham said the town's Silvermine pump station was not impacted by the outages, as the facility's generator can run for up to four days.

The extended outages spurred government officials and first responders to outline plans for another potential disaster.

Hot Springs Fire Department Chief Josh Norton said residents have called the department to inquire about oxygen.

"Sooner or later, you're going to hear that we tell people 'No' when they call us and ask for (oxygen) bottles," the chief said. "We don't have the resources. We've got one bottle. People don't understand the resources it takes to set up shelter. I don't know that (the Hot Springs Community Center) is geared and wired to hook a generator up. So, where's that going to leave us with emergency power?

"I've got a little room, but I don't have a lot of room, down at the fire department."

The fire chief added that because the outages did not occur in the winter, the state Emergency Operations Center could not declare the situation a state of emergency.

"When we get hit with a winter storm, typically that engages the state EOC, so we're then allowed to request resources from other areas that are not impacted," Josh Norton said.

The mayor said she spoke with a number of older residents to ensure their health and safety during the outages, and was prepared to transport residents to medical facilities if needed.

"We really need to get together - have a special meeting, have a workshop," Mayor Abby Norton said. "We need to create a formal plan for when the power goes off, and if the solar panels are not working, and if somebody needs oxygen. We need to have a formal plan for when something happens for the people who can't take care of themselves."

Hot Springs Police Chief David Shelton, Josh Norton and board attorney Ron Moore will also participate in the meeting.

Moore urged the board to speak with other town governments and first responders for background on emergency protocols.

"One thing to do would be to get Josh (Norton) call some of the other departments and get (the town clerk) to call some other clerks, and let's see what some other plans look like so we don't have to reinvent the wheel," Moore said. "I'm sure there are a lot of towns around - Black Mountain, Mars Hill, Waynesville, Hendersonville - that probably have things that they've been working on for years and have tinkered with as things arise that you don't think about. (I'd recommend) you start there."

The Hot Springs Town Board of Aldermen board will plan the special meeting at its next meeting May 1 at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

More: Duke reps meet to talk microgrid Duke Energy representatives hold public meeting to discuss Hot Springs microgrid

Background

According to Handley, the Hot Springs microgrid is the first community microgrid Duke initiated.

Construction on the microgrid began in November 2020, according to Jaclyn Whiteman, Duke Energy's director of distributed energy deployments.

"There's a 10-mile-long radial line that feeds this town, and any time that goes down, it impacts the town," Handley said in March 2022. "So, if we can actually bring the generation source closer to the town, there's less risk overall. We're really excited about this project, because it will be our first community microgrid."

According to Handley, six other microgrid projects - two in Indiana and four in Florida - were to set come on board after the Hot Springs project.

"The town of Hot Springs is really important to us, because this is the blueprint for us to use everywhere else that we're going to build. We're using the learnings from Hot Springs to take to these other sites."

According to Randy Wheeless, a communications manager with Duke Energy, prior to the microgrid, Hot Springs was served by one distribution line.

"It had an outage that knocked out a couple of the towers bringing that distribution line to the town, and a lot of line was on the ground, so it was a pretty big outage," Wheeless said. "In the past, when that happens, people are going to be without power until that thing gets repaired, and in this case it took about 48 hours to get repaired.

"It's definitely a lot longer than a normal outage, but there was obviously a lot of destruction with the storm there."

According to Wheeless, the microgrid is designed to supply the town for roughly four to six hours at a time.

"The microgrid is there to carry the town from like four to six hours," Wheeless said. "The microgrid can carry the town, and hopefully we will repair the outage."

According to Wheeless, when the outage occurred, the microgrid did not come on immediately.

Wheeless said Duke officials attempted to bring the power back on remotely from Charlotte, but when that failed, a team of employees made the trek from Charlotte to Hot Springs, a roughly three-hour trip.

"This was the first real-life test of the microgrid, and it did not come on as planned," Wheeless said. "That's something we're definitely investigating to make sure that doesn't happen again. It actually took about three to four hours for us to get there to manually reset some things to get the microgrid up and running. So, over the course of about 48 hours, the microgrid probably gave about 12 hours of intermittent service.

"The battery can carry the town for a while, but the battery is going to go down. The solar is only going to be running so much. Once the battery taps out at night, there's no solar to recharge it. No doubt, this was a very inconvenient and very unfortunate situation, but the microgrid did provide some relief to the town versus a few years ago when the town would have been out for 48 hours straight."

Wheeless said the outages have afforded the company the opportunity to assess its operations so as to avoid another event like this in the future.

"Obviously, we've learned some lessons about the technical response of the microgrid in a real-life situation," Wheeless said. "There is some learning that we can do there. But overall, we wish there had been a better situation. With it being a 48-hour interruption - even though we had that 12 hours of the microgrid - that's a long outage, and we understand that people may have been impatient about that."

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Hot Springs Town Board after extended power outages: 'We need a plan'