PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Experts predict 2024 will be an active hurricane season, and to prepare for the upcoming months, Dominion Energy is ramping up power throughout Virginia.
It’s the company’s latest strategy to reduce outages in the state and around Hampton Roads. Dominion Energy is burying 2,000 miles worth of power lines in high-risk outage-prone areas.
“What we find throughout the years is that falling limbs and wind and that type of thing are responsible for most of the power outages on these overhead lines.” said Sharlene Cohoon, Dominion Energy grid resiliency and strategic underground programs communications consultant. “And we find that particularly problematic after a major weather event such as a hurricane. So as we move into hurricane season, having these lines underground eliminates, or at least lessens, the risk of the customers in this neighborhood and in other affected neighborhoods, having these power outages.”
It’s all a part of the power provider’s Strategic Underground Program, which allows Dominion to take tap lines, the overhead wires that go into neighborhoods and sustain the most damage during storms and need the most repairs, and consider them for placement underground.
“The good thing to remember about the program and others like it is when neighborhoods like the one we’re in today don’t go out,” Cohoon said, “that’s one less outage area or neighborhood that our crews have to come and spend time and resources getting power back on so they can go to the other areas that are harder hit, get those on more quickly.”
The qualifying areas selected for the placement of the lines is based on a data-driven procress.
“We have a contact form,” she said. “So if people want to reach out and say, ‘Hey, I live at such and such address, my power goes out, can you look at this and tell us if we have a project coming down the line, we will happily look at it and we’ll get back with them.”
Dominion said it plans to bury several thousand additional miles of overhead lines as the program continues in the coming years. The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1 and runs through Nov. 30.
For more information, visit www.dominionenergy.com.