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Power expected to be back on in the Triad by Thursday morning

Across the Carolinas, within 24 hours Duke Energy restored power to 420,000 customers.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The conditions were challenging for many Tuesday and it left thousands without power.

Across the Carolinas, within 24 hours, Duke Energy restored power to 420,000 customers. 

Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks said new technology was a big help in the process. 

"At some points, the wind was too strong for us to put our buckets in the air and we had to focus on safety for our crews, but we did make really great progress," said Brooks. "Our smart self-healing tools kicked in and enabled us to reroute power and restore services where we could in locations and then our crews in the field could make good headway."

Brooks said Duke Energy added new grid technologies and made the poles and wires stronger across the system in the Triad. 

He said the company has done a ton of grid improvements. 

"We're not done with those improvements, we still have more work to do, but where we've got that technology, and where we've made those upgrades, we absolutely saw benefits during the storm and that helps to reduce the number of outages that we see on our system," said Brooks. "It also can help to reduce the duration of outages that we experience. We want to build a resilient system that's ready for a variety of risks, including extreme weather. The grid performed really well during this storm and as we go in and make these repairs and continue to make improvements, we're gonna see that performance continue to improve."

Brooks said Wednesday crews were working on the smaller outages left over from the storms. 

"A lot of the damage we saw was from downed trees and downed limbs," said Brooks. "That's a four-to-six-hour restoration usually because you've got to get in there and repair the polls and repair the lines and when you've got 2000 to 3000 of those locations to repair across the Carolinas, that gives you a sense of the scale of the work we're doing."

Brooks said for each repair it takes about four to six hours for restoration.

The city of Greensboro is working to get everything back to normal as well, but said it isn't a one-day cleanup and is asking for patience.

If there is a tree down in the public's right-of-way, city workers will come to remove the tree. 

If it is on private property, it is the homeowner's responsibility. Homeowners can have the tree cut up to code, which is six feet, and leave it at the curb.

If you want it picked up from the curb, the city said to call the City’s Contact Center at 336-373-CITY (2489) to let the City know. 

That call will generate a work order for a crew to collect the cut-up tree. 

All this cleanup comes as another storm has its eyes on the triad on Friday.

Brooks said it's something crews are watching closely. 

"We did see a lot of rain over the weekend, we saw a tremendous amount of rain at times with this storm, so that is going to soften the ground and it's going to be something we're watching very closely," said Brooks. "A lot of these trees endured some very high winds for quite a while yesterday, so there could be some damaged trees that didn't come down, but with a little more of a push, we could see some outages from that."

Brooks said crews are looking at the system while the weather is good, getting repairs done, and then focusing on what comes next. 

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