More than 4,000 Penelec customers were left without power across Erie's east side and parts of downtown Sunday afternoon, as crews scrambled to pinpoint the cause and get the lights back on. The outage hit hardest in a stretch of the city running from the bayfront up toward East 37th Street, leaving homes and businesses dark in the middle of the weekend.
According to yourerie.com, Penelec's live outage map showed 4,367 outages reported in Erie County as of 1:32 p.m., with the bulk of those concentrated on the city's east side. As reported by Erie News Now, the outages were concentrated around Parade Street and extended toward Buffalo Road, State Street and French Street near the bayfront.
A Wide Swath of the East Side Went Dark
The affected zone covered a sizable chunk of the city. Per the outage map details, customers from Bayfront Parkway up to East 37th Street, and from State Street east to Broad Street, were without service Sunday. Penelec crews were reported to be both investigating the outage and working on restoring it, according to Erie News Now's reporting on the incident.
Power was expected to be restored around 2:30 p.m. Sunday, per the Penelec website as relayed in the same report. The timeline gave affected residents and business owners a rough window for when service might return, though the estimate came from the utility's outage map rather than a confirmed restoration update.
Not Erie's First Big Outage This Year
Sunday's disruption adds to a string of power troubles that have hit Erie County over the past couple of years. In May 2025, a disruption cut electrical service to nearly 15,000 Penelec customers across parts of Erie, Millcreek and Summit townships, according to goerie.com. That outage reportedly originated at Penelec's Old French Road substation, and the outlet noted that service was restored to all affected customers by 10:27 a.m. the same morning.
An even larger event was recorded in a Erie County government update, which stated that at the peak of a March 2025 outage, nearly 25,000 customers across the county had lost power, with the number later dropping to 1,800 as crews worked through repairs, per eriecountypa.gov. Penelec has also carried out planned outages on the east side before; the utility previously scheduled a shutoff from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to make repairs near Mill Road, a job that yourerie.com reported was expected to affect about 2,000 customers along streets including East 30th through East 37th streets, Evans Road, Pennsylvania Avenue and East Avenue, after originally being rescheduled from a Tuesday date.
Checking Your Own Status
Residents looking to track restoration progress for Sunday's outage can consult the FirstEnergy Pennsylvania outage map, which the utility says refreshes every 15 minutes, though it notes an outage may take up to 35 minutes to appear after it first occurs. For now, the scope and resolution of Sunday's outage remain tied to that same live tracking tool, with Penelec crews continuing their work on the east side through the afternoon.
