Hurricane Irene so far has left more than one million utility customers without power in North Carolina and Virginia as high winds keep line crews from assessing initial storm damage, two of the region's largest utilities said Saturday.

Dominion Resources Inc. (D) reported Saturday evening that nearly 783,000 of its customers had lost power, with Richmond and southeastern Virginia the hardest hit, and a smaller portion of outages in North Carolina.

Progress Energy Inc. (PGN) said less than 235,000 customers were without power in coastal North Carolina, Raleigh and some parts of South Carolina as the massive storm swept through the region.

Progress has been able to restore power to several thousand customers in South Carolina and southern North Carolina as the storm has moved north, said Progress spokeswoman Jessica Lambert.

In Virginia and North Carolina, high winds kept line workers from starting to assess the damage from Irene and make repairs to restore power.

Progress won't send crews to restore power unless winds are blowing less than 39 miles an hour, Lambert said.

Customers in the hardest hit areas could be without power for a number of days, as the utility works to repair damage from flooding and restore transmission lines that were disabled during the storm, Lambert said.

Utility crews in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions such as Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PEG) and Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED) were preparing as Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast as a Category 1 storm carrying maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour. ConEd said it is considering shutting off power in all low-lying areas of New York City as a precaution against storm surges.

None of Progress's power plants experienced any damage from the storm. As a precaution, the utility reduced power output at its Brunswick nuclear plant located near Southport, N.C. The facility is operating normally, Lambert said. The utility has had some outages along its high-voltage transmission line system and will have to restore those lines before crews restore power to individual customers in those areas, Lambert said.

The number of outages is likely to grow as Hurricane Irene moves up the East Coast. Hurricane Fran in 1996 cut right through the center of Progress's service territory in the Carolinas knocking out power to 800,000 customers, Hughes said.

Dominion did not shut any of its power plants ahead of the storm. The company's Surry nuclear power plant in southeastern Virginia continues to operate, while its North Anna nuclear plant in central Virginia remains shut following an earthquake earlier this week, said Karl Neddenien, a spokesman for Dominion.

Both Dominion and Progress have brought in workers and equipment from out of state to help their crews restore power once wind speeds slow.

-By Cassandra Sweet and Mark Peters, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-269-4446; cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com

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