The up to two feet of rain that fell on much of South Carolina over the past few days has had a relatively minor effect on the state's electric grid.
Spokesmen for the three utilities serving most of the hardest-hit eastern and coastal regions -- Santee Cooper, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Duke Energy Progress -- Monday reported only a few thousand customers without power, though a Duke spokesman said that utility has restored power to 500,000 customers since the deluge began late last week.
The nearly unprecedented amounts of rainfall have mostly impacted hydroelectric facilities, typically dams that provide flood control. All the said dams on their systems were performing as designed, and that in many cases dam and hydro plant operators were releasing very large volumes of water.
The unrelenting rain has had only a minimal effect on the non-hydro portions of the three utilities' generation fleets, the spokesmen said.
Santee Cooper spokeswoman Mollie Gore said its 1,130-MW Winyah coal station in Georgetown "has faced some challenges" from flooding, but added that power demand on the utility's system has been lower than seasonally typical and that it has "ample" generation to meet needs.
Duke and SCE&G did not report any generation-related effects of the rain, aside from the previously stated impact on hydro generation.
A Duke transmission line "smaller than 230-kV" tripped offline over the weekend, leaving about 3,000 customers in the town of Manning without power, said spokesman Ryan Mosier.
SCE&G estimates it has 10,000-12,000 customers without power.
"Due to the flooding situations occurring in various parts of our service area, we are currently unable to provide estimated times of restoration," spokeswoman Mollie Boomhower said.
