RICHMOND, Va. – Dominion Virginia Power has long supported energy conservation efforts, but no realistic energy efficiency program or readily available technologies will prevent the need for construction of a new 500-kilovolt electric transmission line for Northern Virginia by 2011.

“The prospect of rolling blackouts in Northern Virginia as early as the summer of 2011 is very real,” said Paul D. Koonce, chief executive officer of Dominion Energy. “We took potential best-in-class conservation efforts and other alternatives into account in considering all of the possible solutions to a looming problem and the only answer is to build a line. Pursuing any other action would be just wishful thinking that puts us on a collision course with potential blackouts.”

Koonce noted that just this week the PJM Interconnection cited Dominion as having the fastest growing demand for electricity at peak times among any of the PJM regions across 13 states. PJM likened the increase in demand on the Dominion system to adding approximately 1 million new houses over the next five years.

Reviews of all current reliability studies, including the North American Electric Reliability Council’s Long-Term Reliability Assessment, PJM’s Regional Transmission Expansion Plan and the U.S. Energy Department’s National Electric Transmission Congestion Study, confirm a clear need for a transmission line. The final decision about the need for the line and route will be made by the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Electrical demand in Northern Virginia has grown by about 40 percent over the last decade and is projected to grow by another 8 percent by 2011. Along with increased demand from residential construction, proposed projects in Northern Virginia include the BRAC 2005 plan to add 22,000 employees at Fort Belvoir, the $3.4 billion expansion of the Washington-Dulles International Airport, the $4 billion extension of Metrorail and a number of energy-intensive computer data centers. All these projects and the related additional development they will create will generate large amounts of new demand for electricity.

Last year, Forbes.com ranked Virginia as the No. 1 state in the country in which to do business because of “its strong economic growth, low business costs and excellent quality of life.”  Further, they state that “Business costs in Virginia are very low, particularly tax and energy costs, which are the seventh and ninth lowest in the country.”

“We are proud to play a significant role in this jobs success story and that ranking with our reliable, low-cost supply of electricity for our state’s high-tech industries, small businesses and homes,” said Koonce.

Dominion offers a variety of energy- and money-saving resources to encourage its customers to conserve. This includes time-based rate programs that have customers shifting their heavier uses of electricity to off-peak hours in exchange for savings. A number of industrial customers and other large electricity users help reduce loads by up to 314 megawatts during times of peak demand, enough to serve about 80,000 homes.

Dominion Virginia Power is a subsidiary of Dominion, one of the nation's largest producers of energy, with an energy portfolio of about 28,000 megawatts of generation, about 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of proved natural gas reserves and 7,800 miles of natural gas transmission pipeline.  Dominion also operates one of the nation's largest underground natural gas storage systems with more than 950 billion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves retail energy customers in 11 states.  For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at www.dom.com.

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