Hilton Head power grid not so 'high strung' anymore

The Palmetto Electric Cooperative is taking Hilton Head Island's formerly high-strung power grid underground as part of an ongoing effort to improve electrical reliability on the island.

The cooperative and town are more than two-thirds of the way through a 15-year, $35 million project to bury more than 100 miles of overhead power lines across the entire island, according to utility and town officials.

"It's going quite well, very smooth I would say," said Bob Klein, the town's building official who is helping to coordinate the project. "In the aftermath of all the work over the year, people's short-lived memories don't even remember the lines being there at all."

This week, utility workers began removing the poles and overhead electrical wires along William Hilton Parkway in areas between Mathews Drive and the Fresh Market Shoppes, where new lines already have been buried and turned on, said Wil Saleeby, vice president of engineering and operations for Palmetto Electric. Line removal will continue along that stretch of the parkway for the next several months.

The work marks the 66 percent completion mark for the project, which began in late 2004 to safeguard the island's electrical grid against storms with heavy wind and lightning, Klein and Saleeby said.

"At the end of the day, it's been my experience that the problem with your power lines in a major storm isn't that the wind is blowing the power line over, it's that it's blowing vegetation and tree limbs onto it," Saleeby said.

Flooding from a powerful hurricane would still debilitate the grid, but the underground lines can withstand the strong storms the island frequently sees, Saleeby said. It also allows the utility to isolate problems when they occur, leading to shorter service interruptions for customers, he added.

Last year's deep freeze, for example, caused some small power outages -- but only in neighborhoods whose above-ground power lines were affected by ice, Klein said.

So far the utility has buried more than 85 miles of main "feeder" power lines, smaller neighborhood lines and the low-voltage lines that connect to individual homes, Saleeby said. Palmetto Electric has raised about $23.7 million for the estimated $35 million project through a 3 percent franchise fee on customers' bills, Klein and Saleeby said.

Another 6.5 miles of the highest voltage "feeder" lines and about 17 miles of neighborhood and home lines are still left to bury, he said.

Most of that remaining work is where easements to bury on private property have been more difficult to secure, such as along Spanish Wells, Marshland and Dillon roads, Klein and Saleeby said.

"We've worked very hard to make sure we stay on budget and on schedule," Saleeby said. "The only potential barrier to staying on schedule these last five years resides with our ability to obtain those easements. We've taken the low-hanging fruit and home runs where easements were not problematic, but we do have some of these outlying areas (still to do)."

Follow reporter Zach Murdock on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and on Facebook at facebook.com/IPBGZach.

Related content:

• Project to bury power lines on Hilton Head to advance, Feb. 9, 2015
• The hard-charging days of lighting up the Lowcountry, Dec. 31, 2011
• Burying power lines a boon to Lowcountry, May 20, 2009

This story was originally published February 12, 2015 at 6:42 PM with the headline "Hilton Head power grid not so 'high strung' anymore."