We Energies says 80,000 customers restored to power the day after the storm [Video]

GRAND CHUTE, Wis. (WBAY) – It’s a difficult morning for tens of thousands of people who could be waking up cold. Thousands of homes and businesses in Northeast Wisconsin were without power almost 24 hours after the fierce spring snowstorm started to wind down.

At around 9 a.m. Thursday, We Energies posted that crews have restored power to 80,000 customers, expecting 95% of impacted customers to have power restored Thursday.

Earlier, at 8:30 a.m., Wisconsin Public Service reported 44,582 customers in its service area didn’t have electricity. We Energies still needed to restore power to 16,000 customers. Together the utilities are working on more than 1,800 individual outage point

A substation on French Rd. in Grand Chute is one example of the problem. We Energies says it needs a specialized crew to fix equipment damaged by snow and ice driven by 40 and 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts.

Some of the hardest …