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As chilly residents crank the heat, more power outages possible for Duke customers

 
Linemen from Duke Energy work to restore power along 22nd Ave South and 38th Street South in St. Petersburg after the high winds of Hurricane Irma knocked out power. [SCOTT KEELER   |   Times]
Linemen from Duke Energy work to restore power along 22nd Ave South and 38th Street South in St. Petersburg after the high winds of Hurricane Irma knocked out power. [SCOTT KEELER | Times]
Published Jan. 4, 2018

ST. PETERSBURG — Roughly 10,000 people woke up to not only frigid temperatures on Thursday, but no power.

The spurt of outages in Pinellas County came as people cranked up their heaters to fight off the cold blast affecting the entire East Coast.

The power was restored later that morning, but Duke Energy has been dealing with a host of minor outages thanks to the freeze.

"Duke Energy has sufficient resources to meet customers' energy needs, but the low temperatures will put higher stress on mechanical equipment used to generate and deliver electricity," Duke spokeswoman Ana Gibbs said in a statement. "Isolated equipment problems are possible, which could result in scattered outages."

In north Florida on Wednesday, frozen tree branches fell on lines, causing some outages. In Central Florida, wind and rain affected equipment, Gibbs said.

As of 7:20 a.m., fewer than 350 customer still were without power, according to Duke Energy's power outage map. In total, about 1,000 were without power in Pinellas County later that morning. Gibbs said those numbers change rapidly.

The St. Petersburg outage was caused after a breaker issue in a substation, she said.

Separately, equipment damage caused nearly 1,300 customers to lose power near Curlew and Belcher roads in Palm Harbor as of 7:20 a.m. But that, too, was mostly restored later in the morning.

Duke Energy serves 1.8 million customers in 35 Florida counties.

"When a power outage occurs, Duke Energy's first priority is restoring power as safely and quickly as possible," Gibbs said.

Contact Sara DiNatale at sdinatale@tampabay.com. Follow @sara_dinatale.