Electric News Releases

Dominion Virginia Power Records Best-Ever Reliability Rate

RICHMOND, Va. – Dominion Virginia Power’s 2 million electricity customers experienced record service reliability in 2000 at a rate of 99.976 percent.

“The delivery of electricity is a challenging business because we’re always at the mercy of Mother Nature,” said Edgar M. Roach Jr., chief executive officer. “Despite those challenges, we’re continuing to improve our service reliability and only strive to do better.”

Dominion Virginia Power customers had a constant flow of electricity with the exception of less than two hours in 2000, excluding major storms. The average number of minutes a customer was without electricity was 118, compared with 121 minutes in 1999.

“This is how we measure our success,” Roach said. “The bottom line in our business is our ability to keep the lights on.”

The company’s performance can be attributed to an aggressive underground cable replacement program, tree trimming in storm-prone areas, and the installation of automated equipment to assist in restoring power in as little as 70 seconds:

• Cable Replacement Program
  The company invested $36 million in 2000 to update or replace existing underground cable, specifically in the Northern Virginia, Richmond and Virginia Beach regions. Each year the company replaces or upgrades 2 million feet of underground cable. During the past four years, the company has reduced the number of underground cable failures by more than 50 percent.
   
• Tree-Trimming Program
  Trees coming into contact with power lines are the largest contributors to the duration of an outage. The Virginia State Corporation Commission has requested that Dominion Virginia Power take measures to ensure that its tree-trimming program keeps pace with tree growth in storm-prone areas. To that end, Dominion Virginia Power committed an additional $8 million to clean up storm-damaged areas following last year’s Super Bowl freezing rain storm when 285,000 customers lost power. As part of its annual tree-trimming program, the company invests $25 million and employs tree trimmers year-round to maintain 33,000 miles of power line rights-of-way.
   
• Increased Use of Automated Equipment
  The company enters 2001 with automated equipment installed in more than 150 locations throughout the company’s service area. Dominion Virginia Power has increased its usage of automated equipment, which has the capability to reduce the number of customers affected by an outage within 70 seconds. The company continues to update its electrical system with state-of-the-art equipment.

To implement these programs and other measures to improve the company’s service reliability, Dominion Virginia Power has a 60-member team that reviews outage data and analyzes the root causes of outages. The team tracks the company’s progress by annually calculating the average number of minutes customers are without electricity and planning ways to reduce this number each year.

Major weather events, including hurricanes and ice storms, continue to be the major cause of outages throughout the company’s service area. Including major storms in 2000, the average number of minutes a Dominion Virginia Power customer was without electricity was 324 minutes. This is largely attributed to the Super Bowl freezing rain storm.

“We recognize there are pockets of customers that experienced more than 118 minutes worth of outages in 2000,” said Craig Ivey, vice president-Distribution Operations. “Our top priority in 2001 is to focus on those customers who have experienced repeat outages and improve the reliability of their electric service.”

Dominion, headquartered in Richmond, Va., is one of the nation’s largest producers of energy, with a production capability of 2.7 trillion British thermal units of energy per day. The company has a power-generation portfolio of more than 19,000 megawatts, which is expected to grow to more than 28,000 megawatts by 2005. Dominion is one of the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in North America, with 2.8 trillion cubic feet of equivalent reserves. Dominion also serves nearly 4 million retail natural gas and electric customers. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's web site at www.dom.com.

# # #