Outage to continue into Thursday morning, AEP says in update
Update 8:55 p.m.:American Electric Power says electricity may not be restored until early Thursday evening in much of central Ohio, moving the estimation up, from late Thursday evening.
Crews have made significant progress repairing damage to the transmission lines that bring energy to the Columbus area, a release said. These repairs will allow our team to begin restoring power to substations and customers in the Columbus area beginning in the early morning hours.
AEP previously estimated a restoration time of 11:59 p.m. for much of central Ohio.
More than 230,000 American Electric Power customers were without power Tuesday and Wednesday after intentional outages were conducted to protect the power grid, including outages affecting more than 169,000 in the Columbus area, according to the AEP outage map.
Hard-hit areas can expect a multiday outage, and inclement weather may cause further damage and additional outages, according to a release.
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The forecast for Thursday, AEP noted, includes high temperatures and the possibility of severe weather in the early evening hours. The electric company does not know what, if any, impacts the weather may bring, but we have crews ready to work on any outages that might occur.
Thousands of Columbus-area residents are facing a second day of power outages Wednesday even as the area continues to experience a heatwave with temperatures climbing into the upper 90s.
AEP and other crews were working Wednesday to repair problems that forced the utility to cut off power to an unprecedented number of Columbus-area customers this week.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 135,000 AEP Ohio customers remained without power, about 85,000 of them in central Ohio, down from a peak of 230,000 on Tuesday.
Power was coming back on in some areas on Wednesday, while other areas were reporting power coming back and then going off again. AEP expects power outages to last until Thursday night in Columbus; parts of Ohio won’t have power restored until as late as Saturday.
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One of the hardest hit areas in Columbus is Morse Road near Easton Town Center with 3,330 customer outages. Other areas with large outages include:
- 4,943 customer outages in the South Side between Groveport Road and Alum Creek Drive.
- 2,513 customer outages on I-270 near Dublin-Granville Road on the North Side.
- 2,007 customer outages in the University District
- 2,700 customer outages near Broad Street on the East Side
- 2,759 customer outages on Fishinger Road on the West Side.
It followed a flurry of storms and high winds that blew through the area, along with scorching temperatures — making dealing with the outages even more painful for affected area residents.
AEP says the decision to shut off power in some neighborhoods was done to keep outages from spreading and making it even harder and longer to restore power.
“It’s absolutely the last resort,” AEP spokesman Scott Blake of the decision to turn off power in neighborhoods. “It’s the last thing we want to do.’’
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