CHESAPEAKE, Va. — In previous year during certain storms, residents in the Georgetown neighborhood of Chesapeake could be without power for hours. Since Dominion Energy began placing power lines underground, that has changed.
Those outages were caused by tree limbs hitting overhead power lines. Through research, Dominion Energy created the Strategic Underground Program, which evaluates how many outages an area experiences over a 10-year period.
Since converting the Georgetown neighborhood in 2024, Dominion says the area has had zero significant outages, during storms. Power outages in communities like Georgetown used to last an average of 11 hours. That number is now down to about two minutes on average.
Christina Murff, a communications consultant with Dominion Energy, said the change benefits the broader power grid.
"It really helps restore power to the entire grid as a whole quicker, which allows our communities to get back to life as normal as quickly as possible," Murff said.
Murff said the program also allows crews to be deployed more efficiently.
"No longer are we rolling to those locations where the lines are constantly going out during those storms, and what that allows us to do is reallocate our crews to other areas, and it restores the power more quickly for everybody as a whole," Murff said.
Throughout the community and the state, Dominion is still evaluating projects and working with homeowners to determine who qualifies to have their power lines moved underground.
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