Sugar Hollow Solar has spent over a decade building a strong residential solar business in western North Carolina, based out of the eclectic, buzzing town of Asheville. With a warehouse at Biltmore Village — a town created to house employees of George Vanderbilt’s enormous Biltmore Estate — the business is Asheville through and through. But the 1,000-year floodwaters of Hurricane Helene threatened to wash away all it had accomplished.
Last fall, wind and flooding from the hurricane overtook Sugar Hollow’s (No. 273 on the 2025 Top Solar Contractors List) Biltmore warehouse. Cell service was nonexistent for team members in the direct area, so the first 48 hours were spent checking on neighbors, finding food and water and assessing immediate needs.
“One of our staff members lost her entire house. She swam out of 25-ft swells of water with her one-year-old child, her disabled mother, her dogs,” said Johanna Hagarty, director of marketing and development for Sugar Hollow…