Public Service Commission
Power Restoration More Than 93% Completed - Fewer than 50,000 customers still without power statewide

      More than 93 percent of the customers who lost power at the peak of last month’s massive ice storm have had their electric service restored, according to new figures compiled by the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC).
       Information gathered from all electric providers in the state shows that 49,755 customers were without power as of this morning. That is about 6.5 percent of the 769,353 customers who lost power at the peak of the storm on January 29.
       Most of the customers still without power are in western Kentucky, where the storm damage was the most severe.
       The outage affected 35.7 percent of Kentucky’s approximately 2.2 million electric customers.
       The latest numbers include utilities within the PSC’s jurisdiction as well as rural electric cooperatives within the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) system and municipal utilities. Information on the electric cooperatives was provided by the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives and on the municipal utilities by the Municipal Electric Power Association of Kentucky. The numbers are as follow:
      
                                                           Peak outage 1/29          As of 2/9
Jurisdictional utilities                                       607,152                  29,695
TVA-served cooperatives                                  55,339                  18,095    
Municipal utilities                                            106,862                   1,965

TOTAL                                                         769,353                   49,755

       PSC Chairman David Armstrong said the PSC will continue to monitor restoration efforts by the utilities within its jurisdiction until they are completed.
       “I understand the frustration of those people who are still without power,” he said. “It has taken an unprecedented restoration effort to get us this far, and there is still much to be done.”
        Armstrong said the PSC will review how well utilities responded in the aftermath of the storm and will make its finding public. The PSC also will review its own disaster response procedures.
       “There are lessons in this experience for the PSC and the utilities we regulate,” Armstrong said. “We need to identify what we all can do better the next time we have to deal with a major disruption of utility services.”
       The PSC is an independent agency attached for administrative purposes to the Energy and Environment Cabinet. It regulates more than 1,500 gas, water, sewer, electric and telecommunication utilities operating in Kentucky and has approximately 100 employees.