September 3, 2006

RICHMOND, Va. – Dominion has completed service restoration to more than 90 percent of its customers whose electric service was interrupted because of Tropical Storm Ernesto and is working to restore service to the rest of the affected customers by Sunday night.

The more than 3,000 people working on the restoration effort are focusing efforts on about 47,000 homes and business that lost power since the torrential rains and high winds of Ernesto brought flooding, downed trees and poles, and other problems to the region on Friday. About 550,000 homes and businesses have had their power restored in the 36 hours since Ernesto left Dominion’s electric service area.

Many of the remaining outages are in areas such as the Middle Peninsula, the Northern Neck and Williamsburg, which received much of the storm’s worst weather. In the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck alone, nearly 12 miles of lines were downed by the storm.

Crews also continue to work in Richmond, Newport News, Hampton and elsewhere to complete restoration as safely and quickly as possible.

Customers without electricity can call the Dominion Customer Service Center toll free at 1-888-667-3000 to learn if their homes will have power restored on Sunday. Work crew locations can be viewed on the Dominion Web site, www.dom.com.

Customers are reminded to stay clear of downed power lines and report them by calling the same number.

Dominion is 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 10 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at www.dom.com.

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