Virginia Power Lines to Go Underground

RICHMOND, VA — Virginia's state corporation commission (SCC) on Tuesday approved a Dominion Virginia Power project that will bury about 400 miles of outage-prone power lines.

If the initial state of the project is successful, Dominion Power's long-term vision for the full program could bury up to 4,000 miles of lines serving as many as 150,000 customers in what's called the Strategic Underground Program, or PUP.

Customers will be hit with only an extra $6 a year to pay for the $140 million project.

According to the Commission, "detailed evidence demonstrating both the local and system-wide benefits – and establishing that the SUP is and will be cost effective on both a local and system-wide basis – will be paramount in any future SUP proceeding."

Dominion spokesman David Botkins told the Richmond Times-Dispatch the lines are in various parts of the state, in residential areas that have had "chronically poor reliability or numerous outages over the last 10 years." Specific locations were not immediately available.

"We have identified some of the worst­-performing circuits in our service territory, and the object is to underground lines in those areas to improve the reliability of the entire system," he said.

Dominion already has been replacing some lines after the General Assembly passed legislation in 2014 allowing electric utilities to spend up to 5 percent of their total revenue to move power lines underground.

Photo: Patch file