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Utilities tell committee they restored most storm outages; say rolling blackouts are not planned
Summary
Dominion Energy, the statewide co-op association and Appalachian Power updated the Committee on Labor and Commerce on a winter storm that produced tens of thousands of outages. Utilities said outages were largely caused by fallen trees, most customers were restored, and rolling blackouts were not anticipated.
Dominion Energy, the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives, and Appalachian Power told the Committee on Labor and Commerce on the floor of the committee that crews had largely completed restoration work after a winter storm that produced widespread outages.
‘‘We had about 58,000 outages,’’ Bill Murray, speaking on behalf of Dominion Energy, said in his presentation, adding that the company ‘‘completed restoration this weekend’’ and that remaining outages were small pockets around areas such as Chuckatuck and Williamsburg. Murray said conditions were better than forecast in some respects and that Dominion ‘‘has no intent of’’ instituting rolling blackouts, calling them a ‘‘last-resort tool.’’
Kyle Shreve of the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives told the committee that Community Electric Cooperative had about 429 member-consumer outages as of 1 p.m. and expected the majority of those outages to be restored by the following day. Amanda Cox of Appalachian Power said her company’s peak outages reached roughly 16,000 and that most customers should be restored by 11 p.m. that night, while warning that melting ice could cause additional falling-tree outages.
Committee members asked whether the grid faced supply shortfalls or whether operators considered controlled rolling outages. Murray said alerts were regionally specific and that some narrow parts of the state saw alerts tied to another utility zone; he emphasized the outages during the weekend ‘‘were caused by a tree on the line, not by anything to do with power supply.’’ Shreve told the committee an RTO warning had been issued and later rescinded as conditions improved.
The utilities described operational steps taken during peak demand, saying ‘‘everything we have that will run, runs’’ during high-demand periods and noting that solar resources do not provide generation at night. Several delegates thanked line crews, VDOT, emergency responders and state emergency management for coordinated storm response.
Next steps: utilities said they will complete post-event reviews of capacity and performance after restoration is complete and will share a presentation with the committee by email.
