As of 10 a.m., Consumers Energy reported more than 50,000 customers still without electricity - including a large band of outages in West Michigan from Muskegon County to Kent County.
That's after more than 150,000 Consumers customers in the region lost power on Tuesday when severe thunderstorms with winds of up to 75 miles per hour toppled trees and downed power lines.
Morning Edition spoke with Greg Salisbury, a vice president of electric distribution engineering at Consumers Energy for an update on the restoration work.
"We feel great about having over 114,000 customers restored in our first 24 hours here," Salisbury said, "but we know that there's customers in these hard hit areas that really need to get the power back on. And that's our focus for today."
Salisbury projected the remaining Consumers customers without power will have that restored by noon on Thursday.
Consumers Energy will distribute free water on Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. at Oakridge High School in Muskegon.
Editors note: Consumers Energy and DTE Energy are among Michigan Public's corporate sponsors.
