Charleston, W.Va., November 2, 2012 –   Electricity has been restored to 80 percent of the 182,000 Appalachian Power customers who lost power as a result of Monday night’s storm, according to the company. More than 2,700 line professionals, damage assessors and tree trimmers have restored power to approximately 147,000 customers throughout West Virginia and Virginia.

“Crews will work through the weekend and will not stop until the last customer is restored. As we wrap up in each area, we will shift crews to speed restoration in other places,” said Phil Wright, vice president distribution operations. 

In West Virginia, 32,000 of the company’s half-million customers remain without electric service, down from a peak of 157,000 at noon Tuesday.  Restoration is nearly complete in Virginia, with only 2,000 customers without power.

More than 90 percent of customers will have power restored by Sunday night, but there will inevitably be lingering outages. There are more than 1,100 outages affecting 10 or fewer customers including nearly 400 outages affecting only one home or business. Often in these situations, there are problems with customers being able to receive power. For example, fuses or circuit breakers in the home could have tripped and halted power or tree limbs could have fallen on the line serving a home.

Customers who are still without power should call to re-report it to Appalachian Power’s 24-hour Customer Solutions Center at (WV) 1-800-982-4237.