After Storm Ciaran, around 260,000 households were still without power on Saturday morning, mainly in Brittany and Normandy, Enedis said.
“At 8:00 a.m., 260,000 customers still need to be supplied, particularly in Brittany (200,000) and Normandy (51,000),” the public administrator of the electricity distribution network said in a press release.
“78% of customers have been restored since the end of the storm,” or more than 900,000 households, added Enedis, which has mobilized 3,400 employees and service providers since Thursday morning.
The previous Enedis update reported 875,000 customers without power as of 6 p.m. Friday. On Thursday morning, after the storm passed, there were 1.2 million.
Storm Ciaran has killed at least two people in France and left behind damage that will take several days to clear.
Emmanuel Macron, who visited Finistère, the hardest-hit department, on Friday, urged the French to “remain extremely vigilant” in the coming days.
“We are fighting to restore normal life as quickly as possible,” he also said, particularly aiming to restore power to 90% of affected households by Monday.
Météo-France will put ten new departments on alert on Saturday evening as the storm approaches Domingos, which will cause “violent gusts” of wind on the Atlantic coast, meteorologists said.
In particular, Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne, Charente-Maritime, Charente and Gironde are affected by an orange “wind” alert from 6 p.m.
Government spokesman Olivier Véran spoke on Friday morning of “very different situations, places where repairs can be carried out in the next few hours and places, especially in Finistère, where the power lines have been completely interrupted”.
That department concentrated “more than half” of Brittany’s households that have no electricity, he said.