Outage number is down to 609

Published 8:09 am Wednesday, February 24, 2021

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After 11 days of widespread power outages over Southside Electric Cooperative’s (SEC) 18-county area, the coop’s online outage map is showing signs the crisis will soon come to an end.

SEC restored power to another 4,000 people in the past 24 hours bringing its total number of outages down to just over 3,000.

Lunenburg County still has 609 customers without power, down from 1,512 Tuesday. Prince Edward only has 120 customers still waiting to be connected, down from 521 Tuesday. Charlotte County, which has been one of the hardest hit counties in the area is almost completely back only with only 64 customers remaining to be connected. That’s down from 646 customers Tuesday.

SEC officials said they have more than 900 workers in the field piecing the transmission grid back together. The workers are from coops in Virginia, Maryland, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

The coop said 99% of customers would have power restored by Feb. 25. They appear to be on track to make that happen.