Rain hampers early Texas power recovery after Ike

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Heavy rain on Sunday was expected to slow early efforts to restore electricity to storm-weary Southeast Texas, where more than 2 million customers remain without power after Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast early Saturday.

Utilities were able to restore some power on Saturday as the storm's winds subsided, but more customers lost power as the weakened storm moved to Arkansas, keeping the total number of customers affected at nearly 2.8 million.

Bringing power back to all homes and businesses was expected to take as much as a month in the hardest-hit coastal areas, the companies have said.

City officials in Galveston and some coastal communities urged citizens who evacuated before the storm to stay away until power can be restored.

"We are going to be adamant about pushing to get power back to the state," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said at a press conference in Galveston, the historic coastal city that took the brunt of Ike's landfall.

Power remains out at nearly one-quarter of the nation's fuel production capacity in Southeast Texas. Fifteen Texas refineries shut ahead of Ike and power restoration will be key to the industry's return.

On Sunday, heavy rain flooded highways around Houston and many areas already saturated by Ike's rain, making it difficult for utility crews to travel or work in damaged areas.

While conditions were not ideal, "we are still working in the rain," Entergy spokeswoman Debi Derrick said. "We are ramping up rapidly."

Entergy, which serves Beaumont and southeast Texas, was expecting to use some out-of-state crews as they completed the restoration effort in Louisiana following Hurricane Gustav, which struck that state on September 1.

CenterPoint Energy, the largest utility serving Houston, restored power to 112,000 customers on Saturday, leaving 1.9 million customers, or 88 percent of its total users, in hot, sticky homes with dwindling food and fuel supplies.

New Orleans-based Entergy reported 391,000 Texas customers without power, along with 153,000 in Arkansas and 60,000 in Louisiana.

Texas-New Mexico Power Co, a unit of PNM Resources, which serves an area south of Houston including Texas City refiners, said it lost all 115,000 customers.

Dallas-based Oncor reported 85,000 customers in east and north Texas knocked out by remnants of the storm as it moved north.

Entergy's Sabine Power Station near Bridge City and its Lewis Creek plant north of Houston were shut due to the storm. More than 200 substations and 152 transmission lines were knocked out of service.

(Reporting by Eileen O'Grady, editing by Maureen Bavdek)