By admin 
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — With the start of hurricane season, Duke Energy says it’s prepared to deal with any potential local impacts, with its distribution control center in Wake County set to play a vital role in case of any outages.
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Distribution operator Natalie Poole is one of many who work at the center around the clock, coordinating with crews in the field and speaking with impacted customers.
“Obviously we do not want to have outages, but when they do arise, our priority is to respond quickly to those outages,” she said. “With storm season coming up, we will see an increase in that activity.
“We’re here every day, all times of the day,” Poole said. “We want to be ready at any given moment to be able to respond to any emergencies when they arise.”
The distribution control center will play a key role this hurricane season in responding to any local outages that come from a tropical system or typical severe weather.
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“It is built for the future, it is built to support that growing energy to make sure that we can restore outages faster,” Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks said. “We can better coordinate with our crews during blue sky days and during storms.”
Self-healing technology will also be key. It automatically detects outages and can reroute power to limit impacts.
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According to Brooks, the technology helped successfully prevent 1.2 million customer outages across the Carolinas last year.
“We can often restore power in seconds,” Brooks explained.
As we start this hurricane season, Duke Energy says it’s taken a number of other steps to improve infrastructure, including replacing wooden poles with steel and trimming tens of thousands of trees.
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