More than 2,300 without power in the New River Valley

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (WSLS 10) - Appalachian Power reports more than 2,300 customers are without power as of Friday morning.

AEP says it has two issues creating outages in the Blacksburg area. A bad breaker at a substation in the North Main area of Blacksburg has resulted in outages, and a faulty underground cable at a substation in the Tom's Creek area of Blacksburg has resulted in additional power outages.

"Our line mechanics and technicians are in the field and doing all they can to get the power back on. Our goal is to restore power as quickly and safely as possible. Restoration work is much slower in cold weather because of the intense demand that's placed on the system. We are making some progress. In the last hour we restored service to about 200 customers – again, in cold weather like this we have to take "baby steps." the company said.

AEP says customers can help with the restoration effort by turning off their electric water heaters and furnaces.