ILLINOIS — Nearly 195,000 utility customers across Illinois are without electricity Thursday morning as crews continue working to restore service following widespread outages across the state.
According to PowerOutage.us, 194,874 customers are currently without power statewide, affecting about 3.35% of the more than 5.8 million customers tracked in Illinois.
Cook County has the largest number of outages, with 139,048 customers in the dark, accounting for more than 70% of all outages reported statewide. Will County is reporting 24,433 outages, followed by Peoria County with 5,508, Sangamon County with 3,662, DuPage County with 3,120 and Lake County with 2,774.
Commonwealth Edison Company, which serves much of northern Illinois and the Chicago area, is reporting 175,224 customers without power, the highest total among utilities in the state. Ameren is reporting 15,899 outages, while Jo-Carroll Energy has 1,348 customers without service.
Illinois currently has the highest number of power outages in the nation and ranks first for the percentage of customers affected, according to the outage tracking website.
Utility crews continue restoration efforts across affected areas. Residents are encouraged to report outages to their utility provider and avoid downed power lines, which should be treated as energized and dangerous.
