More than one million U.S. utility customers were still without electricity Thursday after Hurricane Irene blasted through the East Coast over the weekend, the Department of Energy said.

About 1.1 million customers in 12 East Coast states were still in the dark just before midday Thursday, down from 6.7 million over the weekend, the DOE reported.

Thousands of crews from utilities in other states who had traveled to the East Coast to help utilities clear trees and restore power continued to help with the effort on Thursday, the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group, said.

Hundreds of thousands of utility customers in Connecticut and New York were still in the dark.

In Connecticut, more than 258,000 were without power, or about 16% of the state's total customer base, down from about 702,000 during the storm, the DOE reported. Nearly 228,000 customers of Northeast Utilities' (NU) Connecticut Light & Power were without electricity, about 18% of the total customer base.

In New York, nearly 248,000 customers lacked power service, down from about 694,000 during the storm, the DOE said. About half of them are served by the Long Island Power Authority. The utility has said it expects to restore power to 90% of affected customers by Friday.

In New York City and Westchester County, just more than 7,000 customers of Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED) were without power Thursday.

In New Jersey, utilities reported nearly 91,000 customers were without power, less than half of Wednesday's figure, with most of them--69,000--in FirstEnergy Corp.'s (FE) Jersey Central Power & Light territory. ConEd's Orange & Rockland New Jersey utility reported just 7,000 customers were without electricity. About 15,000 customers of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc.'s (PEG) PSE&G also were without electricity.

In Virginia, more than 178,500 customers were still in the dark, according to the DOE.

Dominion Resources Inc. (D) said 181,000 of its Virginia and North Carolina customers were still without electricity, with most of them in the Richmond area. Richmond and other inland areas were particularly hard hit by high winds that knocked down trees and branches, toppling hundreds of utility poles and power lines.

In Massachusetts, nearly 68,000 utility customers still lacked power service, the DOE said. National Grid (NGG, NG.LN) reported more than 43,000 of its Massachusetts customers were without power while NStar (NST) said 14,000 of its customers were still in the dark.

In Maryland, more than 88,000 were still without power, with more than 76,000 of them in the Baltimore area, served by Constellation Energy Group Inc.'s (CEG) Baltimore Gas and Electric.

In Rhode Island, more than 62,000 were still without power, about 14% of the state's total customer base, with more than 97,000 of them in National Grid's service territory.

In hard-hit Vermont, 5,344 customers were still without power Thursday, about 1% of the state's customer base, the DOE said.

-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6468; cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com

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