SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - About 120,000 homes and businesses in the Carolinas were still without electricity Friday in Duke Energy's service territory as crews struggled to restore service to the region after Thursday's violent wind storm.

``It may be several days before we can restore power to all of the affected customers,'' said Sandra Magee, a spokeswoman for Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp. (DUK.N.)

``Our repair crews are experiencing difficulty reaching some customers because many roads are blocked by downed power lines and trees,'' she said.

Most of the outages were in the Burlington and Greensboro area of North Carolina, but the utility also reported 13,000 customers were out of power in Chapel Hill and Durham, N.C. and an additional 6,000 were in the dark in Spartanburg County, S.C.

About 155,000 Duke customers were without power at the peak of the storm Thursday, a number Duke officials said resembled ''hurricane-like'' damage to the company's power distribution system.