Power Progress: Crews Make Headway Restoring Electricity

Crews working to restore power are making significant progress this weekend in the Tulsa area. Ed Bettinger, a spokesman for Public Service Company of Oklahoma, said about 48,000 PSO customers remained without power in the Tulsa metropolitan area Sunday morning. About 50,000 PSO customers regained power on Friday.

``It's pretty much as we expected,'' PSO spokesman Stan Whiteford said. ``The first several days, crews were working on emergency restoration and getting the backbone of the structure up, the main feeders and transmission lines. Now they're really getting into the neighborhoods. The customers are coming on in bigger chunks.''

Click here to see a time estimate of when PSO expects to have power restored in the Tulsa metropolitan area.

PSO's Ed Bettinger says the goal Sunday is to focus on the Northeast quadrant of the metro area; restoring power to 95 percent of customers in that area. On Saturday, PSO restored power to 95 percent of customers in the Southeast quadrant of the metro area, including Broken Arrow.

About 93,325 Oklahoma Gas and Electric customers remained without power, mostly in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. About 5,400 OG&E customers in the Tulsa metro area were still without electricity on Sunday morning.

At last report, Verdigris Valley Electric had more than 4,100 customers without power; Northeast Electric had almost 3,800 customers without electricity; Indian Electric had about 600 customers without power; and East Central Electric had service restored to all but about 200 customers.

Officials had feared a heavier snowfall would hamper efforts to restore power.

``We feel fortunate that we dodged, at least in part, the snow,'' OG&E spokesman Gil Broyles said Saturday morning. ``We were afraid the snow was going to be a huge issue, but it appears it will only be a minor one now.''

Broyles said OG&E officials expected to have 80 percent of OG&E's customer base back online by the end of the weekend. More than 300,000 OG&E customers were without power at the height of the storm.