Pacific Power completes restoring power; crews to help PGE

Associated Press

PORTLAND – Pacific Power finished restoring power following powerful ice storms on Feb. 14 and now some of its crews plan to help Portland General Electric, which still has about 4,000 customers waiting for power, the company said Wednesday.

Pacific Power predominantly serves the southern part of Oregon, but also serves cities such as Corvallis, Lincoln City, Bend and Astoria. At times, more than 80,000 Pacific customers were without power, KOIN-TV reported. The company had more than 400 field personnel working 24/7 through ice and snow to restore power as quickly as possible.

“Crews and contractors were all hands on deck for this monumental restoration effort,” company officials said. “A special thanks goes out to the crews that came to assist us from Rocky Mountain Power within our PacifiCorp family and from MidAmerican Energy and NV Energy in our extended Berkshire Hathaway Energy family. And a heartfelt thank you and deep gratitude to our customers affected by this storm. They showed tremendous patience and generosity during a very trying time.”

PGE said on Tuesday it could be another week before all power is restored and that crews from multiple states had been helping out. Nearly half of PGE’s customers, more than 420,000, were impacted by outages during the storms, PGE President Maria Pope said.

Crews are in the last phases of work that generally only restores power to about 10 customers at a time, she said previously.