Over 600,000 still without power in Midwest
January 30, 2009
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than 600,000 homes and businesses were still without power on Friday morning after snow and ice storms earlier this week left more than 1.5 million customers in the dark from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, local utilities reported.
The storms on January 27-28 hit Kentucky the hardest, leaving more than half a million customers without power.
Officials at E.ON U.S., which owns Louisville Gas and Electric Co and Kentucky Utilities Co, said it could take up to two weeks to restore service to all 332,000 still without service.
E.ON U.S., a subsidiary or German energy company E.ON AG, owns and operates about 8,000 megawatts of generating capacity and transmits and distributes electricity to more than 900,000 customers and natural gas to more than 325,000 customers in Kentucky.
High temperatures in Louisville, the biggest city the Bluegrass State, will remain below normal in the 20s and 30s degrees Fahrenheit through Sunday, according to forecasts by AccuWeather.com.
In Arkansas, another hard hit state, the electric cooperatives, which serve about 490,000 customers, said outages peaked at about 300,000. The co-ops still had about 178,000 homes and businesses in the dark Friday morning.
After crashing across the Midwest, the storm dropped a lot of snow in the Northeast before moving off the East Coast into the Atlantic Ocean late Wednesday.
Snow, however, does not disrupt power service like ice. Ice accumulates on trees and branches, snapping them onto power lines.
The storms on January 27-28 hit Kentucky the hardest, leaving more than half a million customers without power.
Officials at E.ON U.S., which owns Louisville Gas and Electric Co and Kentucky Utilities Co, said it could take up to two weeks to restore service to all 332,000 still without service.
E.ON U.S., a subsidiary or German energy company E.ON AG, owns and operates about 8,000 megawatts of generating capacity and transmits and distributes electricity to more than 900,000 customers and natural gas to more than 325,000 customers in Kentucky.
High temperatures in Louisville, the biggest city the Bluegrass State, will remain below normal in the 20s and 30s degrees Fahrenheit through Sunday, according to forecasts by AccuWeather.com.
In Arkansas, another hard hit state, the electric cooperatives, which serve about 490,000 customers, said outages peaked at about 300,000. The co-ops still had about 178,000 homes and businesses in the dark Friday morning.
After crashing across the Midwest, the storm dropped a lot of snow in the Northeast before moving off the East Coast into the Atlantic Ocean late Wednesday.
Snow, however, does not disrupt power service like ice. Ice accumulates on trees and branches, snapping them onto power lines.
