The U.S. Department of Energy said Sept. 30 about 2 million customers still were without power after Hurricane Helene knocked out power to about 6 million across 10 states stretching from Florida to Ohio. 

The most affected states were Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, which sustained more than half the outages. As of the morning of Sept. 30, about half of those customers remained without power, said a report from DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER). 

The storm hit Florida’s Gulf Coast late on Sept. 26 and moved north the next two days through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. It brought strong winds and heavy rains, which led to flooding in some states, DOE said. 

Restorations remain underway as utility mutual assistance crews totaling about 50,000 workers from 27 states, the District of Columbia and even Canada were working to restore power, although the hardest-hit areas were expected to be without power through the end of this week.

“Restoration efforts after Helene will be a complex, multiday effort in many locations due to the extent of damage and ongoing access issues,” CESER said. “Utilities have been encountering widespread flooding and debris impeding access to damaged infrastructure. Communications disruptions are also impacting restoration efforts.” 

Duke Energy owns utilities in several states the storm affected, including its Florida subsidiary’s territory covering the area where Helene landed — the state’s “Big Bend” region where the panhandle meets the peninsula. Florida saw more than 1.3 million customers lose power, but Duke reported that 95% had been restored by Monday afternoon. 

Georgia Power reported it had 15,000 personnel working to restore power to all of its customers, having completed restoration to 840,000 customers by the afternoon of Sept. 30, with 370,000 still without electricity.  

Those remaining without power were in the hardest-hit parts of Georgia, in its eastern, southern and coastal regions, including Augusta and Savannah. The Southern Co. Affiliate has to replace more than 7,000 power poles, 15,000 spans of wire equivalent to 700 miles and more than 1,200 transformers and also remove more than 3,000 trees from power lines, it said. 

By 4 p.m. on Sept. 30, Duke Energy Carolinas reported it had restored power to 1.35 million customers, with 443,000 still without power in South Carolina and an additional 346,000 out in North Carolina. It expects to restore service to most of the 790,000 customer outages by the night of Oct. 4. 

“We’re beyond grateful to the state and local government workers who have been on the job 24/7 to clear debris, re-open roadways and help those whose lives have been changed forever by this storm,” Jason Hollifield, Duke Energy’s storm director for the Carolinas, said in a statement. “Our thousands of lineworkers and other storm workers are gaining better access to the destruction — allowing them to remove trees, broken poles and downed power lines, log each piece of damaged electrical equipment, and begin repairing and rebuilding major portions of the power grid that were simply wiped away.” 

North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives reported an additional 90,602 customers among its members without power the afternoon of Sept. 30. 

Around the same time, Duke Energy Ohio still had 1,180 customers out, according to its outrage map, while American Electric Power subsidiary Appalachian Power, which serves western Virginia and parts of West Virginia, reported 110,197 customers still without power.