Over 2 million customers without power in US southeast from Helene

FACTBOX-Over 2 million customers without power in US southeast from Helene (Updates with latest outages, Duke energy and Georgia Power's latest statements) Sept 30 (Reuters) - Over two million homes and businesses in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia were without power on Monday after Helene slammed into the Florida Panhandle as a major hurricane last week, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
 

HELENE'S IMPACT
 

The winds, rain and storm surge killed at least 90 people in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, according to a Reuters tally of state and local officials.
 

Helene forced major U.S. electric utilities to shut or slow power plant operations on Friday, with Southern Co taking one of its Georgia nuclear reactors offline and Duke Energy halting output from two coal-fired generating units.

Now that the storm has passed through Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, utilities in those states have started to restore power. In total, Helene knocked out service to over 5.2 million customers.
 

RESTORATION EFFORTS
 

Duke Energy said in a statement that it has restored power to more than 1.1 million in South and North Carolina, as of 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) Sunday.
 

Out of the Carolinas' utility companies, Duke energy currently has the most outages with around 486,461 customers lacking service in South Carolina, while 335,134 in North Carolina remain without power, according to PowerOutage.us.
 

Georgia Power meanwhile restored power to over 740,000 customers following Hurricane Helene, it said in its storm update on Sunday.
 

INFRASTRUCTURE DAMAGE
 

"There are lots of areas across the South Carolina Upstate and North Carolina mountains where we’re going to have to completely rebuild parts of our system, not just repair it,” said Jason Hollifield, Duke Energy storm director for the Carolinas.

Georgia Power determined that Hurricane Helene was the most destructive hurricane in its history damaging infrastructure across the state, and also added that, "there is the potential for additional damage and power outages due to the saturated ground and weakened trees."