Storm Communications Shine During Hurricane Florence

Hurricane Florence, which made landfall in Sept. 2018, highlighted the importance of effective storm communications. 

For some parts of North Carolina, the impact of the hurricane turned out to be worse than expected – in fact, some areas of the state received a whopping 20 inches of rain!  Luckily, the Fayetteville Public Works Commission (PWC), a combined electric/water/sewer utility which has roughly 82,000 electric customers, had been preparing for this for years and was up to the task.

Storm Communications Best Practices Demonstrated by the PWC

The Fayetteville PWC’s storm communications during and after the hurricane focused on the following objectives:

• Rapid assessment of needed system repairs
• Proactive alerts to minimize customer calls
• Provision of real time outage statistics to derive accurate restoration time estimates

The backbone of these efforts is the Sensus FlexNet communication network, which provides accurate outage detection and more responsive issues resolution which allowed PWC personnel to focus on the primary task at hand – restoration. 

The FlexNet network features two benefits (among others) that helped optimize the PWC’s storm communications.  First, it has battery backups for antenna tower collectors that stay online even during a loss of power and continue to provide critical information such as which towers have gone offline and how to prioritize tower restoration.  Second, it provides overlapping coverage that provides enhanced data for optimal outage detection.

Aside from the technology, PWC’s employees were also effectively optimized.  Every employee had a second role and had received extensive training on what to do before, during and after a storm.  Once the hurricane became immanent, employees were quickly activated in the emergency response center thanks to the real time FlexNet data.  Being well-organized and armed with real time data, employees were able to effectively answer customer questions and pushed out proactive notifications to the local media as well as social media platforms on an hourly basis.   

Overall, the PWC’s storm communications proved highly effective.  In fact, the company received an award for its social media communications, which reached nearly 500,000 people.  And the company’s smart network, which captures data from sensors and transforms it into actionable intelligence, was the backbone of these impressive results.