AES Indiana, Duke Energy work to restore power as thousands remain impacted after severe weather

UPDATE: As of 3:40 p.m., AES Indiana is reporting 21,308 outages while Duke Energy is reporting 17,077 outages. AES Indiana confirmed that its crews have restored power to approximately 71% of its customers in the past 24 hours as crews continue working around the clock following Wednesday night’s storms. A total of 1,198 incidents remain as crews work to repair damage caused by downed trees, poles and power lines.

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INDIANAPOLIS — Thousands of people remain without power on Thursday morning after the region saw damaging wind gusts as part of a severe storm Wednesday.

In updates from both AES Indiana and Duke Energy, crews from the respective companies said they are continuing to work to restore electricity at impacted homes.

According to previous reports, Indiana saw as many as 78,000 power outages statewide as of Wednesday morning. Many of the outages came from Central Indiana, including south of Indianapolis and in areas near Bloomington and Edinburgh.

AES Indiana

In an update from AES Indiana at around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, officials said that there are around 31,500 customers who do not have power. This comes after around 68,700 customers were impacted after Wednesday’s severe weather.

“AES Indiana is fully staffed and crews are working around the clock to restore power,” the update read. “We anticipate this will be a multi-day restoration effort due to widespread damage to infrastructure across our service territory.”

Officials with AES Indiana said power was restored to more than 45% of customers overnight. The update read that crews are continuing to assess infrastructure damage from downed trees, poles and powerlines, stressing there were “a significant number of incidents” that were a result of the storm.

For more updates on power restoration efforts, click here.

Duke Energy

As of 6 a.m. on Thursday, officials with Duke Energy said that around 31,000 remain without power after Wednesday’s storm. Officials said the storm caused more than 100,000 power outages.

The update read that Duke Energy restored power to more than 73,000 customers impacted by the storms on Wednesday. Power line technicians, along with tree trimmers, damage assessors and other support personnel, have helped assess damage and restore outages.

“I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as our crews work quickly and safely to restore power,” Clint Carnahan, the general manager of emergency preparedness at Duke Energy, said in the update. “We’re bringing in hundreds of additional resources to supplement our local workforce and help with power restoration in the hardest hit areas.”

Officials said that more than 500 additional crew members were brought in to supplement its statewide workforce. The additional crew members are expected to respond to the hardest hit areas, including:

• Bartholomew County
• Hamilton County
• Monroe County
• Union County
• Vigo County

For more information about estimated restoration times for Duke Energy customers, click here.