Heavy rain hail, and tornadoes last week caused power outages for 76,666 electric customers in the South, while snow and wind from Colorado to Ontario knocked out the lights to more than 600,000 electric customers the previous week.
Last week’s storm in the south affected Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, as reported by the Department of Energy’s Energy Assurance Daily. The storms occurred Thursday and Friday.
The 4-County Electric Power Association, a co-operative electric utility in Mississippi was hardest hit with 12,000 of its 47,000 customers without power due to 20 broken power poles and significant downed power lines. Murray Electric in Kentucky had 8,000 outages; Entergy Mississippi, 7,700 customer outages; and Florida Power & Light 6,390 outages, according to Energy Assurance.
Separately, in British Columbia, 10,000 BC Hydro customers lost power March 31 because of a substation fire, according to the federal agency
The previous week the outage count was far worse due to snow and wind from Colorado to Ontario. The DOE office reported 610,000 outages on March 23–24. Xcel Energy, which serves 3.5 million customers in eight western and midwestern states, was hardest hit with more than 300,000 outages. In Canada, more than 100,000 customers served by Ontario’s Hydro One lost power.
Power Outages March 23-April 1
Credit: DOE Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability
Credit: DOE Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability
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