About 925 Entergy customers remained without electricity Thursday afternoon after scattered power failures across the state earlier in the day left thousands in the dark.
At one point early Thursday, more than 9,500 were without power, including thousands in Faulkner, Garland, Pope and Pulaski counties. By 1:45 p.m., those without electricity numbered 925, with most of those in Pope County.
The utility said the failures were largely caused by the cold weather.
"It may be where you see the power line sagging due to the cold and it coming in contact with the neutral line," Entergy spokesman Sally Graham said in an email. "It could also be fuses burned out."
Graham said Entergy also must change its procedures when power is being restored in a high energy-usage time, like an extreme cold spell when most customers will have their heat turned up.
"When an outage occurs, restoring all those customers on a given circuit has the potential to create large instantaneous load," she said. "And that load could be higher than the built-in protective devices on a line can handle, meaning equipment could trip offline or cause more damage — and longer outages.
"So our crews in concert with the distribution and operations center will restore a segment of customers on a circuit, carefully watch the loads, and then bring on another segment of customers. During weather extremes, we change our processes to make sure we protect our system and also do the right thing by our customers. That means restoring power in a way that best ensures reliability for them."
Graham said customers in the dark can help the utility avoid troubles by disconnecting major appliances like an electric furnace or a television that would automatically come on when the power comes back on.
Customers can leave a single light on and, when that signals the power is back, then gradually turn on everything else.
"When service is restored, there will be less chance of a circuit overload," Graham said.
The power failures come as Arkansans endure the coldest and driest air of the season, the National Weather Service said.
