WILMINGTON, N.C. – After years of small improvements, residents of North Carolina's coast are still facing mass power outages during severe storms. Over 300,000 people were left without power for a day after Hurricane Isaias hit the coast as a Category 1 storm.

“We recently just lost power for about 18 hours when the hurricane came through,” Victoria Cabaniss said. “It was a little frustrating at first.”

Cabaniss has two young children at home, which made losing power during the storm an even bigger challenge. She and her family have been living here for a year and says this was the longest they've been without power.

Duke Energy recognizes there is a need to grow the electrical grid in the Wilmington area. Currently the company is focused on installing smart technology that can automatically detect power outages and redirect power immediately to customers' homes. This cuts back on the amount of time it takes to restore power after bad storms.

“If we're not meeting our customers' needs then we need to make changes,” Duke Energy's Jeff Brooks said. “We need to do things differently, and that's really what grid improvement is about.”

Downed power lines and poles are some of the most common reasons people lose power during a storm. In order to fix that, Duke Energy is upgrading poles, especially near the beachfront, that can sustain up to Category 3-force winds.

“In areas where we've done some of the improvements we saw power stay on,” Brooks said. “In other areas we were able to restore it quickly because the backbone wasn't damaged.”

The company is taking a systematic approach to strengthening the grid by targeting areas that regularly experience power outages during storms and making their services more reliable.

“We were actually rather surprised that we did lose power around here because a lot of our lines are underground,” Cabaniss said. “But very grateful that we got it back as soon as we possibly could.”

The company says each storm is a learning experience that highlights areas of the grid that need strengthening. Customer feedback is directly responsible for many of the projects happening in the Wilmington area, and residents can expect to see new improvements going into place everyday.