For more than a decade, Tideland has made significant, targeted capital investments to harden our infrastructure in all six counties to not only reduce outage frequency but improve restoration times. Where practical and feasible we have pursued redundancy to create alternative paths for power in emergency situations.

Unfortunately, there is only one way for power to reach Ocracoke and that is across Hatteras Inlet and down Highway 12. After years of erosion jeopardized that power path on the south end of Hatteras Island, Tideland invested $3.5 million to replace aerial infrastructure with a buried submarine cable. Upon completion, that brought the total length of our submarine cable to 31,250 feet. Unfortunately, Mother Nature took a few heavy swings at Ocracoke starting with Hurricane Dorian in 2019, and a string of nor’easters washed away a significant chunk of the shoreline protections we relied on. If you’ve been to the ferry dock on the north end of Ocracoke you’ve seen up close and personal the dramatic changes to the island’s landscape. As a result, we now need an additional extension of the armored, submarine cable where it comes ashore at Ocracoke along with relocation of targeted aerial infrastructure away from the Atlantic Ocean.

In April, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s State Energy Office announced selection of seven projects to receive more than $20 million to improve North Carolina’s electric grid. We are pleased to be one of the seven recipients resulting from the competitive grant process.

Authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these funds are provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants Program.

This cost-sharing grant will ease Tideland’s unanticipated financial expenditure so soon after the 2020 submarine cable extension. The lead time to obtain the armored, submarine cable is approximately 18 months, so we are eager to get the process underway.