Jacob Ogles
As of Tuesday morning, nearly 49,000 customers remain without power in Florida. The mass outages persist nearly five days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in the state of Florida.
According to the Florida Public Service Commission, the great majority of customers in Florida who lost power had it restored already. But some hard-hit areas in Florida’s Big Bend remain without power, according to a 6 a.m. update.
At this point, about 9,500 Duke Energy customers remain without electricity. Most of those are in Pinellas County, where nearly 8,600 are still in the dark, with Duke hoping to change that situation within 24 hours. While those customers make up just 1.5% of all Pinellas power customers, the dense county still has the highest raw number of individuals without electricity.
But most of the reported outages — nearly 3,200 customers — rely on one of the electric cooperatives in the state. Another 1,300 have municipal power. All Florida Power & Light Company users have had power restored, as have all customers on the state’s largest electric cooperative, Tampa Electric (TECO).
Madison County remains the last in Florida where a majority of customers still have no power. More than 6,200 in the county still have outages reported, 53.97% of all customers there.
The bulk of those customers rely on the Tri-County Electric Cooperative, which still reports that 75% of its Madison County customers are out of power and has not provided an estimated time for lights to come back on. Some 500 customers there are on Duke Energy, which hopes to restore power within 24 hours.
In Taylor County, 6,300 customers, about 45.04% in the county, still await restoration. All are on Tri-County Electric. Some 1,400 Tri-County customers in Jefferson County, about 15.94% of the county, are also awaiting power.
In Dixie County, nearly 3,400 customers, or 31.95%, still have no electricity. Most of those are Central Florida Electric Cooperative customers, with about 200 Tri-County users. There are also 2,500 Central Florida Electric customers out of power in Gilchrist County, which has 24.27% of customers in the dark, and 1,800 in Levy County, which has 6.84%.
The Clay Electric Cooperative still has more than 6,900 Columbia County customers without power. The county has 20.13% of customers still without electricity. That also includes about 300 Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative customers.
But more than 2,800 Clay Electric customers in Alachua County also await service. Another 1,300 without power in Alachua are on Gainesville Regional Utilities, which said it may take 72 hours to restore all power.
Some 5,100 Suwannee County customers, all on Suwannee Valley Electric, also await service, representing about 20.42% of the county.
