Mercer County and other parts of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio braced for rolling blackouts Friday afternoon. The lights stayed on in large part because of conservation efforts and major industries curtailing consumption.

Pennsylvania Power Co. issued a rolling blackout warning early Friday and said it might hit the local area shortly after noon and last between two and six hours. The nation's power grid was strained as a result of the electrical outage that struck much of the Northeast and parts of the Midwest on Thursday.

Penn Power's area manager Randy Coleman was close to giving the all-clear signal at 7 p.m. Friday after the peak electrical demand had passed without mishap, but wasn't quite ready to do it completely.

"I'm going to hesitate on the all-clear, but we're very stable at this point." he said. "We're still calling for and asking for customers' conservation. Things are getting better and better." He said the company expected operations to improve through the weekend.

It was hard for Penn Power to say how close the area came to rolling blackouts while utility crews scrambled to bring power plants back online. More than 100 plants throughout the Northeast and Midwest were knocked offline Thursday.

FirstEnergy Corp. said all its Pennsylvania customers regained electric service by noon Friday, ending the state's participation in the largest blackout in United States history. About 80,000 FirstEnergy customers, mostly in Erie, Crawford and Warren counties, were affected by the blackout.

FirstEnergy's operating plants were running full throttle Friday to meet electricity demand. The Akron-based company owns Penn Power.

"Everything that's available is up and running at its maximum potential,'' said Coleman.

A rolling blackout warning was given as a precaution, Coleman said.

"It's just a supply-and-demand situation,'' Coleman said. "Our supply is limited by the number of power plants and their level to operate. If we had lost any significant part of our generation abilities that could have triggered more problems.

He credited conservation efforts, major industrial customers curtailing operations and quick repairs of downed power plants which were brought back into production.

"If we didn't get the conservation efforts we got, which was more than we had anticipated, it could have put us there,'' Coleman said of a potential blackout.

Initially on Friday the utility forecast possible rolling blackouts for today, Sunday and Monday, but as the day passed the company began easing off that assessment.

"It's looking better and better,'' Coleman said. "On Monday we're still looking at industrial customer curtailments but even that's something we'll take a look at on Sunday and relax that a bit.''

In a rolling blackout, electricity is purposely shut off on a circuit feeding particular neighborhoods or section of a city. After a time, power is restored to that circuit and another circuit shut off. Rolling blackouts are designed to prevent the power grid from collapsing.

After Penn Power issued the warning, wild -- and at times outlandish -- rumors began spreading like wildfire. One had it that all of the electricity flowing into Mercer County would be turned off.

"I heard they're not going to allow anyone to drive,'' one frantic caller to The Herald said.

Both rumors proved to be false.

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