Nearly two years after Hurricane Helene knocked out power to more than 700,000 Duke Energy customers in North Carolina, many families are still wondering what would happen if a storm that size hit again. At the same time, they’re watching their electric bills climb, with Duke seeking increases as steep as 18% for some customers before settlements this summer scaled that back.
It’s all happening at a time when data centers and extreme weather are simultaneously draining energy and weakening grid infrastructure. Duke expects data centers alone to account for roughly 10% of its total electricity sales within the next few years, and the company says meeting that demand will require billions in new gas plants, transmission lines, and substations.
But not everyone in North Carolina gets their power from Duke. If you live in rural and smaller communities, your electric utility might be one of the state’s 26 local electric distribution cooperatives. Those “co-ops” serve roughly 2.8 million North Carolinians. And they’re doing things a little differently lately.
Compared to Duke Energy, which is a shareholder-owned, for-profit utility, co-ops are locally governed, member-owned, not-for-profit utilities. A co-op customer has a governance stake and can vote in board elections. And even though they face many of the same system-level issues as major utilities, they can make decisions at a more local level. Right now, many of those decisions have to do with diversifying their power source.
North Carolina’s electric cooperatives now operate, or have in development, 43 battery storage projects, more than co-ops in any other state, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.
Reporting by Canary Media shows that Wake Electric, a cooperative serving close to 60,000 households and businesses from the Raleigh suburbs to rural communities near the Virginia border, runs three of them, each doing a different job. A battery paired with a small housing development kept residents’ power essentially uninterrupted during a 2022 storm that knocked out lines and left other customers without power for hours. A second battery, paired with a solar farm in Wake Forest, stores solar power generated during the day so the co-op can use it after sunset. A third, larger battery at the co-op’s main substation discharges power during the hours when electricity is scarcest and most expensive.
That timing follows a common pattern among the state’s co-ops: Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, another North Carolina co-op, explains on its website that battery storage lets members charge during lower-cost, off-peak hours and draw on that stored energy when electricity costs the most, reducing how much power the co-op has to buy at its priciest moments.
Similar projects are underway at co-ops across the state, coordinated through North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. NCEMC began aggregating batteries across the state in 2022, when it launched a project connecting 10 batteries at co-op substations statewide, according to electric.coop, the national trade publication for electric cooperatives. Amadou Fall, NCEMC’s chief operating officer, said at the time the technology would let the co-ops improve reliability for members “now and in the years to come.”
According to Canary Media’s reporting, cost management, not emissions reduction, is driving much of the buildout. Rob Greskowiak is a chief commercial officer of Lightshift Energy, a storage developer that works with co-ops across the region. In an interview with Canary Media, he said that the systems have saved members money while improving both resilience and reliability. “It’s really an economic story,” he said. Erik Hall, a director at North Carolina Electric Membership Corp., said in an interview with the outlet that pooling the batteries together lets co-ops call on stored power exactly when a community needs it.
It’s an approach that has precedent. According to North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives, the trade association representing the state’s co-ops, Tideland EMC and North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. completed the state’s first cooperative-run microgrid on Ocracoke Island in 2017, combining solar panels, battery storage, and diesel generation. The system got its first real test that July, when a construction crew accidentally severed the island’s only transmission cable to the mainland. Utility Dive’s reporting at the time found that most of the island kept its power, even as a viral hashtag suggested a full blackout. “There just wasn’t enough power to support all the tourists,” NCEMC’s Lindsey Listrom told Utility Dive.
North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. is also pursuing a stake in a large new gas plant in partnership with Duke, a planned 1,360-megawatt hydrogen-capable facility in Person County set to come online in 2028, and already owns and operates two smaller gas-fired peaking plants on the Outer Banks. Falling battery costs and federal tax incentives have simply made storage one of the more straightforward investments a utility can make, especially as data centers keep adding new pressure to the state’s grid.
North Carolina’s co-ops have set their own goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives. State law only requires the same 2050 net-zero deadline larger, investor-owned utilities, defined under the state’s 2021 carbon-reduction law as those serving at least 150,000 in-state customers, such as Duke.
To find out if your own utility company offers battery storage, check North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives‘ directory of the state’s co-ops to see if you’re served by one. Co-op members can ask their local provider directly about battery storage, along with upcoming meeting dates and voting opportunities. If you’re a Duke Energy customer, the company offers a program called PowerPair, which gives residents up to $9,000 toward home solar and battery installations. Because program capacity is limited and varies by where you live, check directly with Duke Energy about availability before applying.
