Texas utilities slow to restore power after Ike

HOUSTON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Texas utilities reported slow progress on Wednesday in restoring power to customers in the dark after Hurricane Ike, while most who had lost power in the Midwest were reconnected or expecting lights soon, company and federal reports showed.

CenterPoint Energy (CNP.N), the major utility serving Houston, said it has restored power to 36 percent of its customers by early Wednesday. Hurricane Ike slammed the Texas coast five days ago before winding its way toward the northeast, leaving more than 4 million homes and businesses without power in its wake.

Entergy Texas (ETR.N), which serves a larger area -- but less people -- in Southeast Texas, has restored electricity to about 15 percent of its total customer base.

The U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday morning that about 3 million remained without power in seven states, including 1.9 million in Texas and 1 million in Ohio and Kentucky.

Both CenterPoint and Entergy reported 99 percent of customers without power on Sunday after Ike, a strong category 2 storm with winds around 100 mph (160 kph) and a significant storm surge.

Utility crews from more than three dozen states and Canadian provinces have converged on Texas to cut trees and make repairs to solve the biggest power outage in state history.

In Houston and Galveston, 782,000 CenterPoint customers have been restored, leaving 1.37 million, or 61 percent of those CenterPoint customers affected, without power, down from 2.15 million after the storm.

CenterPoint said it hopes to have as many as 75 percent of its customers back online by Sept. 23, 10 days after the storm.

Total restoration may take a month in the most heavily damaged areas near the coast.

Entergy has restored most affected customers in Louisiana and Arkansas, and 60,600 customers in Texas. Entergy hopes to have many more of the remaining 332,000 customers back by Sept. 25.

Hardest-hit areas, including Beaumont, may not get service before Oct. 6, Entergy said.

No dates have been set for coastal areas, such as Bolivar Peninsula and Sabine Pass, where Ike's storm surge destroyed vacation homes and left high water, Entergy said.

Duke Energy's (DUK.N) website showed on Wednesday that it had 297,500 customers in Ohio and Kentucky without power, down from a peak of about 1 million without power on Sunday night.

Two-thirds of those are in the Cincinnati area, mainly on the Ohio side of the Ohio River but about 40,000 in three counties on the Kentucky side.

Duke, the main power supplier in the region, said about 1.95 million customers lost power at one time or another. Some of those customers would count twice in such a count.

FirstEnergy (FE.N) said on Wednesday it had restored power to all but about 117,500 customers in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, down from 1 million at the peak of the outages on Sunday night. That's half the number of outages on Tuesday. Most of those out should be restored by the weekend, a company spokesman said. (Reporting by Eileen O'Grady and Bernie Woodall; Editing by Marguerita Choy)