News
AEP Issues Its Friday Update
By: Tom Hodson
Posted on:
Although power has been restored to 87 percent of the 660,000 customers who had outages, about 87,000 still have no electricity. AEP released its most recent figures at 10 a.m. Friday morning.
The bulk of the electric customers still suffering power outages are in central and southeastern Ohio including the Newark and the Athens service areas. These areas include: Athens, Fairfield, Franklin, Guernsey, Hocking, Jackson, Knox, Licking, Meigs, Muskingum, Perry and Washington Counties, according to AEP.
Some 21,000 customers still remain without power in Central Ohio and about 17,000 in Licking County.
AEP has reported the outages by county. In Athens County, 6,612 customers are still out – about 24 percent of AEP’s customers. In Guernsey Co. 6,152 customers are out (40.2 percent), Hocking Co. 3,368 (30.6 percent), Jackson Co. 2,697 (26.8 percent); Licking Co. 11,874 (19 percent), and Fairfield 5,229 (17.1 percent).
Meigs County still has 3,304 (29 percent) without power. Muskingum Co. has 9,121 (25 percent) without and Vinton Co. 2,089 (36.4 percent).
The Athens, Gallipolis, and Marietta areas are scheduled to have 90 percent of the customers restored by midnight July 6. Lancaster restored by midnight July 7 and Pomeroy by midnight July 8. Wellston is online for midnight July 9.
Last week’s storm damaged more than 680 transmission structures, across Ohio, AEP said. These structures support transmission lines that cross the state. AEP added that these lines feed power to substations and neighborhoods.
AEP has about 5,000 line crews working. Some 2,500 are from out-of-state and as far away as Canada.