Power outages from Irene falling

That's down from nearly 1 million customers of various utilities who lost power at some point during the storm.

Progress Energy reported outages affecting 98,000 customers across a wide swath of North Carolina, from the Triangle to the coast.

The counties with the most customers without power were Craven at 13,800, Wayne at 11,400, Nash at 10,900 and Onslow at 10,500. Thousands were also still without power in Franklin, Lenoir, Duplin, Carteret, Beaufort and Pamlico counties.

Progress Energy estimated that most customers would have power back by midnight Wednesday. Outages could linger into Thursday for the hardest-hit areas, including Zebulon, Selma, Spring Hope, New Bern, Jacksonville, Morehead City and Kinston.

Virginia-based Dominion Power had 59,000 customers without electricity. That includes nearly 4,400 customers along the northern Outer Banks. Other outages covered northeastern counties, from Halifax to Currituck and Dare.

North Carolina's electric cooperatives had 63,000 customers without power Monday morning. Power agencies run by cities and towns reported outages affecting 95,000 customers as of Sunday night.

Utilities concentrate first on restoring service to power plants and transmission lines, then feeder lines and smaller power lines, and finally individual buildings.

Porgress Energy had 14 transmission lines and 22 substations stop running during the hurricane. All but one transmission line and two substations were up and running again by Sunday night.

The company has more than 2,200 personnel working to restore power.