Janelle Irwin Taylor
Tampa Electric (TECO) has made significant progress restoring power to customers in the wake of Hurricane Milton.
The utility has restored power to almost all customers in Polk County. TECO also reached its goal of having 75% of customers’ lights back on in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties a day early, hitting the goal Monday morning instead of by the end of Tuesday.
The company said essentially all customers should be back up by Thursday.
Nearly 70% of all TECO customers had their power restored by early Monday. Work will continue on restoration efforts in Polk County for isolated areas where power has not yet come back on.
TECO also continues to make progress on restoration efforts in Pasco County.
The estimated restoration for essentially all customers in Pasco County is 11:59 p.m. on Monday. The estimated time of restoration for all customers in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties — with few exceptions — is 11:59 p.m. Thursday.
Many customers still without power may be restored earlier than those deadlines.
Isolated areas of extensive damage could take longer to restore.
More than 6,000 lineworkers, tree trimmers and other personnel are working around the clock to finalize restoration efforts. That includes overlapping 16-hour shifts.
“Our full team is blanketing our entire service territory, doing what we can to take another big bite out of our outage count today,” TECO President and CEO Archie Collins said. “To the remaining customers who still don’t have power, we ask for your patience. Please know we are coming.”
TECO’s system suffered nearly 600,000 outages as a result of Hurricane Milton, most caused by uprooted trees and other storm debris that knocked down overhead power lines and poles.
Flooding also contributed to the damage.
