Contact: Priscilla Knight, 703-392-1580, pknight@novec.com
95 Percent of Co-op Members Now have Electricity
NORTHERN VIRGINIA, Jan. 28, 2011 -- Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative crews continue to restore power to customers who lost electricity when a snowstorm caused hundreds of trees and branches to fall on power lines throughout the area on Wednesday, Jan. 26. The snow and trees knocked out power to approximately 30,000 NOVEC customers at the height of the storm. NOVEC has reduced the number to approximately 6,900 on Jan. 28 at 1:15 p.m.
NOVEC hopes to have most of the remaining customers without electricity online by Friday night, but power restoration could extend into the weekend.
“No one wants to be cold or in the dark,” says Mike Curtis, vice president of public relations. “We’re concerned about all of our customers who don’t have power. That’s why we called in crews from sister co-ops in Virginia, and contract crews from inside and outside the state.”
Larry Shaffer, manager of NOVEC’s System Operations Center, says fallen trees and branches are the main problem.
“Before the sleet started, we had spotters out in the field ready to look for problems,” Shaffer notes. “Red lights on hundreds of light-emitting diode (LED) fault indicators, which we installed last winter, have really helped our spotters find outage locations, especially in wooded areas.”
Shaffer says spotters, along with NOVEC’s state-of-the-art computers and an airplane pilot’s aerial report, have all worked together to help locate problems on the power distribution system.
“Once spotters report outage locations, we send crews to cut trees and branches off the lines,” Shaffer explains. “We have been fortunate that we haven’t had a lot of broken utility poles and damaged transformers, because replacing them would take even more time and effort.”
Shaffer says, “There’s still a lot of work to do. We’re making good progress. We won’t stop working until all of our customers have power.”
Outage Summary
| County | Affected | Power On | Served |
| Clarke | 0 | 100% | 32 |
| Fairfax | 2193 | 91.699% | 26418 |
| Fauquier | 901 | 84.648% | 5869 |
| Loudoun | 149 | 99.379% | 23992 |
| Manassas Park | 369 | 92.981% | 5257 |
| Prince William | 3418 | 95.571% | 77168 |
| Stafford | 12 | 99.754% | 4875 |
| Total Customers | 7042 | 95.096% | 143611 |
Last Updated: 1:48:09 PM, 1/28/2011 |
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What to do if a Power Outage Occurs
- Call NOVEC at 703-335-0500, or 1-888-335-0500 and follow the prompts from the Interactive Voice Recognition system for the quickest response. The IVR system will report the outage to the System Operations Center immediately and crews will be assigned to the outage.
- Stay away from downed power lines and poles and the area around them. Assume they are energized. Storm debris, such as metal fences and bicycles, can hide a downed power line, which can energize anything that comes in contact with it. Notify NOVEC immediately.
- Use flashlights or lanterns instead of candles. If you use candles, watch them and keep them away from children and flammable household furnishings.
- Open freezers and refrigerators only when necessary.
- Use a portable generator, camp stove, or charcoal grill only outdoors to prevent creating deadly carbon monoxide fumes indoors.
