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UPDATE: CVEC officials estimate that storm cleanup will be finished and all the lights will be back on no later than 4 p.m. Saturday.

The storm cleanup continues across the region. As of 6 a.m., the lights are still out for more than 1,500 homes in Buckingham County. As for when that problem will be fixed, it’s a question without an answer at the moment. 

The outage comes as a result of Friday night’s storm, which knocked out power to residents in Appomattox, Buckingham, Cumberland and Prince Edward. Most of those areas got restored before midnight. The lights in Piney River, for example, went out because a tree fell on the lines. 

The tree was cleaned off and the lines repaired. It’s a little more complicated in Buckingham. 

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative delivers power to the 1,510 homes still affected through the Centenary substation. The co-op buys that power from American Electric Power (AEP), through its Appalachian Power subgroup. And it’s an issue on the AEP side that is currently keeping the lights off. 

“The problem has been identified by AEP crews and members will have power restored once the problem is fixed,” Central officials said in a statement posted to their social media outlets early Saturday. “We are still awaiting an estimated restoration time from AEP so we can get power back to our Centenary substation.”

There was no explanation from Central officials about what the problem was, only that it’s being addressed. Company officials added in the statement they recognize it’s never a good time to be without power and they appreciate the patience of residents as the problem gets addressed.

Just before midnight, they had asked Central customers to be prepared for the lights to be out overnight, if not a bit longer, so that food could be stored, generators turned on and flashlights brought out. 

There are 8,722 homes hooked up to one of the three power companies in Buckingham County. This outage is large enough that it covers roughly 17.31% of the total power customers in the county.