Duke Energy provides update on power restoration

(WSPA) – Duke Energy announced Thursday that they expect to have power restored to all but 259,000 customers in the Upstate and western North Carolina by Friday night.

The company said 219,000 of their customers in the Upstate and 201,000 customers in western North Carolina remained without power as of Thursday evening following damage from Hurricane Helene.

More than 21,000 workers are in the area restoring power for Duke Energy, the company said.

In the Upstate, Duke Energy said they expected to restore 134,000 more customers by Friday night and the remaining 85,000 by Sunday.

In North Carolina, the company said they expected to restore power to 27,000 additional customers by Friday night with another 69,000 expected to be restored by Sunday.

105,000 customers in western North Carolina are in areas where power cannot be restored quickly due to catastrophic damage – either homes cannot receive power, destruction of the grid infrastructure, or lack of access.

“We continue to work with a variety of stakeholders to get critical assets – like our vehicles, workers, poles, transformers, wire and more – to the areas where we are restoring power for our customers,” said Jason Hollifield with Duke Energy. “We know partnerships and collaboration with local, state and federal agencies are critical – and will continue to be – as we collaborate with these communities to rebuild.”

More than 2.3 million Duke Energy customers lost power at some point during the storm in North and South Carolina.

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