Duke Energy was continuing work to restore the 11,000 remaining customers without power on June 15 in the Cincinnati region following damaging storms that caused the most significant power outage impacts to the company’s Ohio and Kentucky service areas in more than a decade.
The areas most impacted by the June 13 storm included Butler, Warren and Hamilton counties.
Duke Energy storm officials had established an estimated time of power restoration for 11:59 p.m. June 15 for remaining outages, but many customers’ power were restored prior to that time.
As crews arrived and assessed damage, updated restoration times were added to Duke Energy’s online outage map, which updates every 10 minutes.
Northern Kentucky customers were restored as of 7 a.m. on June 15.
Extra crews from Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina arrived throughout the day on Tuesday to help speed up the assessment and restoration process. Lineworkers and vegetation crews are working in the region day and night.
“We moved swiftly to bring additional resources into the area, given the widespread and significant damage and this week’s heat advisory,” said Amy Spiller, president, Duke Energy Ohio and Kentucky. “We greatly appreciate the assistance from neighboring crews and our customers’ patience in the aftermath of this storm.”
The storm damaged a large amount of electric transmission and distribution equipment, including substations, utility poles, power lines and other key system components – all of which need to be repaired before power can be restored to the remaining individual customers.
While 166,000 customers were simultaneously without power at the peak of the event Monday evening, crews have since restored power to more than 221,000 customers, in total.
The remaining outages often affect only a small number of customers, which increases the amount of time it takes for crews to assess and restore power to the many individual outage events.
