Dominion Energy burying some power lines to prevent outages - Richmond Times-Dispatch

Dominion Energy burying some power lines to prevent outages

A few steps away from the Boyd Road Book Barn — where neighbors in the Chester neighborhood swap books — there’s an odd pale-gray PVC pipe running the length of one of the poles carrying a Dominion Energy main feeder down Osborne Road.

Two houses down, tucked behind a tall, old oak tree by a line of neatly trimmed bushes is a green metal box about the size of a small dishwasher.

They’re clues — about the only ones visible along Boyd Road — of one small portion of the 2,000 miles of outage-prone overhead power lines that Dominion has replaced with underground connections over the past 10 years.

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Power lines run along Osborne Road at the area where it intersects with Boyd Road in Chester.

The Boyd Road project buried 23,000 feet of 7.6-kilovolt power line, serving 140 customers. The overhead line along Boyd Road was on Dominion’s list for replacement with a buried line because those customers suffered six outages between January 2020 and October 2021 caused by faults along the line — a fallen tree limb, a snake or squirrel creating a short — making it one of the utility’s most prone to fail.

“We used to get a lot of outages, sometimes for days when there’d be a windstorm ... in 2003, with (Hurricane) Isabel, we were out for 10 days,” said Gladys Williams, whose lawn hosts the Book Barn — and the pole with the PVC pipe.

“Now, it maybe just blinks out and blinks back on,” she said.
Williams

Going underground is a process that can typically take a year — but construction is usually a matter of a few weeks, said Chadd Porter, a manager in Dominion’s strategic undergrounding program. He’s one of only three undergrounding managers in the utility’s Richmond region, and at any one time he is juggling up to 40 projects.

One reason it takes time is that customers along a line have lots of questions.

Williams, for instance, wanted to be sure it is safe. She wanted to know where under her neat garden or lawn Dominion was thinking about burying the line, and how disruptive the work would be.

“We explain that undergrounding will mean a lot less outages for them and their neighbors, and that it means we can respond faster to other people’s outages,” Porter said.
Chadd Porter is one of only three undergrounding managers in Dominion Energy’s Richmond region, and at any one time he is juggling up to 40 projects. Going underground is a process that can typically take a year — but construction is usually a matter of a few weeks, Porter said.

That part is easy. Still, there are questions:

How deep is the line? At least 30 inches.

Where will you go? Generally about 15 feet inside the lot line dividing a customer’s property from the public right of way, the buffer of land alongside a public road.

Will you tear up my lawn? No, the contractors don’t dig trenches, but send a tunneling machine to scoop out a path.

And that big tree? The contractors can direct the tunneling machine to go as deep as necessary to avoid roots.

What about my water or gas line? The contractors use ground penetrating radar to pinpoint any underground utilities, including sewer lines, phone lines or irrigation systems. When they find any that cross the line the tunneling machine will follow, they will dig what they call a “pothole” so they can watch to make sure the tunneling machine will dig out its path well below any other lines.

Is it safe? Could we get a shock? The PVC pipe along the pole at the corner of Williams’ lot shields the thickly insulated 1/3-inch diameter wire that connects the main feeder lines to the tap lines that, in this case, run along Boyd Road. It’s not possible to touch the wire itself. The tunnel is lined with that same kind of PVC pipe and the wire inside is insulated, so it is never in contact with the soil.

Over the next 12 months, beginning Aug. 1, Dominion plans to replace roughly 382.5 miles of overhead lines — 1,227 tap lines in all — that directly serve 19,373 customers and where outages can have knock-on impacts for an additional 12,693 customers on lines connected to these, said Steven A. Eisenrauch, Dominion’s director of grid resiliency, in a recent filing at the State Corporation Commission.

Over the past 10 years, these lines have suffered 5,724 outages, he said.

Some of these projects had been delayed because of an industrywide shortage of transformers — the safety equipment that regulates voltage — but this started easing in the second half of 2023.

All in all, the current phase of replacing outage-prone lines with underground ones will cost $258 million, Eisenrauch said. Dominion is asking the SCC to approve an increase to the surcharge that finances this work, which now amounts to $2.50 on a typical $138 monthly residential bill. Dominion’s proposed increase would add an additional $2.18 to the surcharge.

Underground lines benefit all customers, Porter said, because fewer outages on troubled lines means a faster response to outages elsewhere.

“We launched this program a decade ago after finding that a significant number of storm-related power outages were occurring in a relatively small number of areas,” said Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia. “By burying the lines in these outage-prone areas, we’re not only reducing the number of outages, but we’re also shortening how long it takes to get the power back on.”
Power lines are attached to the pole with a line running underground at Boyd and Osborne roads in Chester.

At the same time that Dominion is replacing outage-prone tap lines like Boyd Road’s with underground line, it is also launching a push to make its most outage-prone main feeder lines — the ones that feed several tap lines, like the three wires running on the tops and arms of the poles on Osborne Road — less vulnerable.

The key here is replacing old poles with taller, stronger ones that are dug deeper in the ground. They are spaced closer together, and their fiberglass crossarms do a better job than the old wooden ones at preventing fallen tree limbs from bringing down the entire pole. Sometimes, this effort involves finding a new path for a main feeder line.

Since 2019, Dominion has hardened more than 265 miles of main feeder power lines, with the ultimate goal of hardening 1,000 miles by 2030.

There’s one last outage when a tap line is buried, though.

Once the tap line and all the service lines connecting it to the customers on the line are buried, that last outage comes when it’s time to turn off the power on the overhead line and switch it over to the new underground line, Porter said.

It doesn’t take long, and the company gives plenty of notice, including a final round of door-knocking to let customers know.

“And when we finish, your lights come back on, like before,” Porter said.

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The turbines Dominion currently operates are part of a pilot project off Virginia Beach.

Turbines off Virginia Beach are part of Dominion Energy’s pilot program. The utility seeks to build a 176-turbine wind farm.

Dominion Energy built wind turbines off the coast of Virginia Beach as part of a pilot program.

This 2022 image shows a turbine from Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project off Virginia Beach.

This turbine, shown April 11, is part of Dominion Energy's wind farm pilot project off of Virginia Beach.

Members of the media took a tour to Dominion’s offshore wind farm on April 11. Dominion, which has been operating two turbines about 27 miles east of Virginia Beach since 2020, appears poised to scale up offshore wind dramatically.

Members of the media take a tour to Dominion Energy offshore wind farm on Monday, April 11, 2022 in the Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Members of the media take a tour to Dominion Energy offshore wind farm on Monday, April 11, 2022 in the Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Members of the media took a tour to the offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach on April 11.

Dave Ress (804) 649-6948