Thousands of Latvian homes still without power, restoration promised by Friday

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, roughly 8,500 households — about 3% of all customers affected by the recent storm — were still without electricity, according to Ilze Dimante, head of external communications at grid operator Sadales tīkls, who spoke to the LETA news agency.

The situation remains most difficult in the Aizkraukle, Bauska and Jēkabpils municipalities, where the number of disconnected households is highest. Crews from less-affected regions, such as Kurzeme, are being redirected to the hardest-hit areas.

Repairs continue, full restoration expected by Friday

Sadales tīkls says repair crews remain active at sites, so the number of homes without power was expected to keep falling through Wednesday evening. The company forecasts that electricity supply will be fully restored to all customers by Friday. Drones are being used across the country to speed up the identification of damaged sections of power lines, many of which were hit by falling trees, snapped wires or broken poles.

More than 200 Sadales tīkls crews are involved in the recovery effort, with all of the company's available resources mobilized. Seven crews from Estonian grid operator Elektrilevi have also been brought in to help. The company is coordinating with the State Fire and Rescue Service, state forest enterprise Latvijas valsts meži, telecom operators, municipalities and other responsible institutions.

Why power sometimes doesn't return immediately

Dimante explained that restoration happens in stages: crews first fix faults in the medium-voltage network before moving to low-voltage lines. Sometimes a customer is notified that power has been restored but still has none — meaning there is also a fault in the low-voltage segment closer to the home. In such cases, residents are asked to file a new report, though this does not mean the repair is being postponed. Renewed outages are also possible if damaged trees or branches continue falling onto lines.

As previously reported, the night of August 22 brought the strongest summer storm Latvia has seen in decades, with wind gusts locally exceeding 30 meters per second. It caused extensive damage to both distribution and transmission networks, initially cutting power to about 277,000 customers.