South Carolina Post-Helene Energy and Communication Resilience Report

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (DOE CESER) in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), ICF, and the Savannah River National Laboratory, released a comprehensive report examining how Hurricane Helene exposed critical vulnerabilities in South Carolina's energy and communications systems, and what the state can do to strengthen its resilience.

The March 2026 report was produced at the request of Governor Henry McMaster following the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which left roughly 1.4 million South Carolina customers without power at its peak, one of the most significant outage events in the state's history. The report includes a quantitative risk assessment of the state's power, petroleum, natural gas, and broadband communications infrastructure, paired with targeted recommendations for mitigation.

The report evaluates seven major natural hazards, including hurricane winds, storm surge and coastal flooding, riverine flooding, high winds, extreme heat, wildfire, and landslides against the state's electricity, natural gas, and liquid fuel infrastructure. It also highlights South Carolina's meaningful progress in grid resilience, most notably through the state's Grid Resilience Grant Program funded by IIJA Sec. 40101(d). To date, the program has awarded more than $17.7 million across two funding rounds to 20 utilities statewide for modernization projects ranging from automated fault detection to line undergrounding. The report recommends a three-pronged approach to strengthen the state's resilience, focused on redundancy, robustness, and rapid recovery, with priority actions including:

• Hardening overhead lines
• Accelerating vegetation management
• Replacing wooden utility poles with metal
• Expanding grid automation to speed power restoration
• Installing backup generators at fuel terminals and cellular towers
• Expanding the adoption of satellite internet services (e.g., Starlink) for emergency communications
• Improving coordination between utilities and county Emergency Operations Centers before disasters strike
• Streamlining FEMA documentation processes
• Developing stricter siting requirements for energy facilities in flood zones
• Investing in pre-event planning exercises to better prepare for future storms of Helene's magnitude

An integral part of the development of this report was a collaborative meeting held on October 21, 2025, in Columbia, which brought together more than 30 private and public sector entities to kick-off the assessment and introduce the key stakeholders involved in the process. South Carolina will use the findings and recommendations from this report to inform the SC Energy Office's State Energy Security Plan, guide statewide energy security planning efforts, and prioritize mitigation investments.

The full report is available through the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff website.