Dominion Restores Power to 600,000 Customers; Nearly All Restorations to be Completed Friday

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  Published in Business and Finance on Monday, August 29th 2011 at 18:41 GMT by Market Wire
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Dominion Restores Power to 600,000 Customers; Nearly All Restorations to be Completed... -- RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

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* Power restored to more than 50 percent of 1.2 million customers affected by hurricane

* 90-95 percent to be restored by Friday; more than 75 percent by Wednesday night

* Restoration effort involves more than 6,000 workers, 1,100 bucket trucks

RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion will restore power to 90-95 percent of the customers affected by Irene-related outages by the end of the day Friday. Seventy-five percent will be restored by the end of the workday on Wednesday.  In Northern Virginia, where Irene had lesser impact, restoration will be completed tomorrow.

Nearly all customers in the remaining areas, which suffered the most extreme damage, will have their electric service restored by the end of the day Saturday.

"Our goal is to restore power to our customers, particularly those that provide critical services, as quickly and as safely as we can," said Rodney Blevins, vice president of distribution operations for Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power. "As of noon today, we have restored power to about 600,000 of the 1.2 million customers affected by Irene-related power outages. We are working to help ensure that our customers have power for the Labor Day weekend."  

More than 6,000 people are helping restore power, including more than 2,000 workers from utilities in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina and South Carolina.  An additional 800 workers will arrive today and bring the total number of bucket trucks on the job to 1,100.

"The damage caused by Irene was widespread.  Trees and limbs brought down power lines and poles, and storm debris and flooding made it difficult to reach some work areas," Blevins said. "The Irene restoration effort is the company's second largest in its history, behind only Hurricane Isabel from 2003, when 1.8 million customers were affected and restoration took two weeks."

Irene's greatest impact was along a swath from Roanoke Rapids to Richmond and over to the middle peninsula – Gloucester and Northern Neck. The winds were more prolonged, if not as powerful at their peak, than those that affected Eastern Virginia, according to the National Weather Service, and the area is more heavily wooded.

Customers are urged to call Dominion at 1-866-DOM-HELP (1-866-366-4357) if:

• Your power is out.  Do not rely on your neighbors to report your outage.
• Wires are down.  Treat all fallen wires as though they are energized.
• Your electric meter appears to be damaged.  

A listing of locations where crews will be working today on outage restorations is available at [ http://www.dom.com/storm-center/crew-work-locations.jsp ]

Storm restoration information is available online at [ http://www.dom.com/storm-center/index.jsp ].

An outage information map is available on Dominion's website at [ http://www.dom.com/storm-center/dominion-electric-outage-map.jsp ].

A video description of the storm restoration process is available online at [ http://www.dom.com/storm-center/how-we-restore-power.jsp ].

Dominion (NYSE: [ D ]) is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 28,200 megawatts of generation. Dominion operates the nation's largest natural gas storage system and serves retail energy customers in 15 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's website at [ www.dom.com ].  

Follow us on Twitter at: [ http://www.twitter.com/DomVAPower ]. 'Like' us on our Facebook page by searching, keyword: Dominion Virginia Power.

SOURCE Dominion

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