More than two weeks after Hurricane Helene swept through North Carolina in late September of 2024, about 14,000 people living primarily in remote Appalachian communities were still without electricity. People living in the more urban Asheville area were without potable water for nearly two months after the storm devastated its water infrastructure.

Jamie (JT) Trowbridge is a program manager with Footprint Project, a nonprofit disaster management organization that develops and deploys sustainable infrastructure networks. He spends a lot of time thinking about energy infrastructures and how they anticipate, absorb, and adapt to recover from natural disasters. In his profession this is called energy resilience. 

Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the country in two decades. And for Trowbridge It was an example of the importance of energy resilience that hit close to home. He saw how the devastation of the category 4 storm affected communities across the state and the differences in how those communities responded to the crisis. He saw how resources made their way to places like Asheville, where he lived compared to how people living in more rural areas, like his partner in Barnardsville.

When two trees had fallen blocking transportation in and out of his suburban Asheville neighborhood, his neighbors waited for officials to arrive and remove the trees. In Barnardsville,  they pooled their resources to find solutions until help made its way to their community.

“The bridge to my partner’s holler got washed out and within two days her neighbors in the area had broken out an excavator, crushed the broken bridge, filled it in and made it driveable,” he said. 

Hurricane Helene severely compromised North Carolina’s electrical grid. Without electricity at home, many people turn to generators. Those generators require fuel, but without electricity, gas stations don’t have functioning pumps. No fuel means no electricity, but even with fuel, generators aren’t ideal. 

Trowbridge recalls a makeshift community in Waynesville named Haven on the Hill, where nearly 50 donated RVs were providing shelter to families displaced by the storm. They were all running generators to keep warm, power communication devices and keep the lights on. While the community offered respite during a tumultuous time for people in need, the generators were loud, expensive, and polluting the air. 

“Solar generators are clean, quiet and don’t require you to get fuel,” he said. “People were driving to Tennessee, if they knew the routes that weren’t destroyed, to go get gasoline. Doing solar instead for disaster response makes a lot of sense.”

He wasn’t alone with that thought. In late 2025, North Carolina’s state energy office received $10.4 million in funding as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed by Congress in 2021 and signed into law by President Biden. The state directed about half of that funding to invest in a microgrid initiative designed to build energy resilience across the state in preparation for future weather disasters. 

The collaborative effort involves a number of partners, including Land of Sky Regional Council, NC Sustainable Energy Association, Footprint Project and several other regional partners. The goal is to install up to two dozen stationary microgrids across six counties impacted by Hurricane Helene. Two mobile units will service the state. The project is expected to be completed in the summer of 2027.

“It is great that the government is funding this but it’s something we were doing with or without them,” Trowbridge said.

He and his colleagues at the Footprint Project are designing and building microgrids at designated sites that serve multiple needs for rural Appalachian communities. In many cases, the organization was already working with the sites before the funding became available. 

Libraries, food banks, school gymnasiums and fire stations can contribute to microgrid energy systems. Once the microgrids are set up, they’ll provide electricity in the event of an emergency or weather disaster, while also lowering electricity costs for the buildings every other day of the year. 

“We want those places to have water, electricity and we want people to know they can go there in a disaster and get their basic needs taken care of,” Trowbridge said. “Anybody who’s been through a disaster will tell you there is a lag between when the disaster strikes and when help starts rolling in.”