Duke Energy officials apologized Tuesday for a series of outages on Christmas Eve that affected approximately half a million customers. Company officials say some of the outages were longer than expected because of a failure of automation that required crews to restore the power manually.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) Duke Energy Corp. executives on Tuesday blamed a convergence of widespread extreme cold, higher than projected demand, malfunctioning plant equipment and the inability to buy power elsewhere for rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve the first for the company in the Carolinas.