A multi-year Duke Energy project is close to beginning in eastern Rowan County, and the company has announced that residents should be on the lookout for lane closures around the area.

The project is expected to kick off late this month or early July, wrote Logan Stewart, communications manager for Duke Energy, in an email. The work will be concentrated around Rockwell, but will extend into the county as well as nearby Granite Quarry and Faith, said Stewart.

Most of the work will take place along Highway 52 and will likely involve lane closures in the area.

Stewart said that the work will mainly consist of reconductoring work, which includes replacing overhead lines along the company’s power lines. The “stronger, newer lines will help with reliability for customers in the area,” she wrote.

Part of the reason for the project was the rapid growth Rowan County is experiencing, in addition to increasing its weather-related resilience.

“These investments also focus on strengthening the grid to make it more resistant to outages from severe weather and improving resiliency to restore power faster when outages occur. We routinely evaluate outage data and plan and execute targeted improvements on our system — from trimming trees, installing stronger and more resilient equipment and self-healing technology,” wrote Stewart.

The project is expected to last between two and three years, wrote Stewart.

“Making these investments in the Rowan County community to upgrade our equipment helps make our system more resilient to severe weather and outages, and we look forward to being able to better serve our customers there,” wrote Stewart.