Power restored to Potomac Edison customers in Maryland

UPDATE: Potomac Edison reports power has been restored to all customers.

GERMANTOWN, Md. (AP) -- Potomac Edison says an equipment failure knocked out power for thousands of customers in Maryland, with Montgomery County being the hardest hit.

Company spokesman Doug Colafella (KAH'-lah-fell-uh) says about 41,000 customers were affected by the outage, which occurred about 1:50 p.m. Monday. Service had been restored to about half of those customers within a couple of hours, and everyone was expected to be back in service by late afternoon.

At the height of the outage, about 29,000 customers were without power in Montgomery County. That's 89 percent of Potomac Edison's customers in the county.

Colafella says an equipment failure at a substation knocked out a major distribution line.