ComEd: All power will be restored by Friday night

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Updated: July 15, 2011 12:38PM

Commonwealth Edison says it is ahead of schedule on power restoration efforts and hopes to have 95 percent of the outages restored on Thursday, the rest on Friday.

More than three days after the short, violent windstorm downed trees and power lines across the Chicago area, just less than 100,000 homes and businesses remained without power Thursday afternoon, the utility company said.

But while initial estimates were that some customers would remain without power until sometime Saturday, the company has upped its estimate to 95 percent restoration by midnight Thursday and complete restoration by midnight Friday. Crews from several other states are assisting in the effort.

The northern suburbs remains hardest hit, with more than 75 percent of the remaining outages. Towns most severely affected included Waukegan, Gurnee, Crystal Lake and Round Lake Beach, the company said.