FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — While most of Foxborough remained without power Tuesday from Tropical Storm Irene, service was back at Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots’ final exhibition game is scheduled for Thursday night.

A power company spokeswoman said it was “absolutely not” true the team received special treatment.

The club had internal discussions about how to handle the game against the New York Giants if power wasn’t restored, but no decision was made before the lights were back.

“We thought we might have to go down to the new MetLife Stadium (the Giants’ home) to play the game there,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, said Tuesday. “We know it’s a serious situation. I think there are over 700,000 homes in Massachusetts that still don’t have power.”

As of late Tuesday afternoon, 7,287 of 7,820 customers in Foxborough had no power because of damage from Sunday’s storm, according to National Grid, the company that serves the town.

It hopes to begin restoring power to parts of Foxborough today with most customers back by Friday, National Grid spokeswoman Jackie Barry said.

She said the company received many calls from residents who felt the Patriots got priority.

“Customers in Foxborough and a lot of other customers are understandably upset,” she said. “We know this is extremely unpleasant.”

The stadium and its surrounding area were back in service because one substation that serves them, in the adjacent town of Wrentham, wasn’t as badly damaged as the other one in Foxborough, Barry said.

The Pats paid for expansion of the Wrentham substation after a power outage just before halftime of a 20-6 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in the 1996 AFC final, said James Nolan, senior vice president of operations, administration and finance for the stadium and the Patriots.

“This would guarantee we would still have power if the feed was lost from one of the substations,” he said.

Three generators returned power to part of the stadium by 5 p.m. Monday, and by 8:30 p.m., power was restored from the Wrentham substation.

Kraft said he understands people without power are upset “because I didn’t have power in my house (in Brookline) and I was here (Monday) when there was no air conditioning and no lights and it was difficult. But I don’t run the power company.”