September 2, 2006

RICHMOND, Va. – The vast majority of the more than 605,000 Dominion homes and businesses affected by Tropical Storm Ernesto should have their lights on by Saturday evening with the bulk of the restoration effort finished Sunday night.

The storm — packing more of a punch than originally forecasted — caused moderate damage across most of Dominion’s electrical system in Eastern and Central Virginia, with some pockets of more severe damage. Crews should make significant headway in restoring power Saturday and finish up all but the most severely damaged locations by Sunday night. Some outages may carry over into Monday.

As of 10 a.m. Saturday, Dominion had restored service to more than 400,000 customers and about 207,000 customers were still without power. Dominion has completed repairs to the most critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, police and fire departments, and water treatment and pumping stations.

Customers without electricity can call the Dominion Customer Service Center at toll free 1-888-667-3000 to learn if their homes will have power restored on Saturday or Sunday. Work crew locations are available at 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 employees have developed a restoration strategy that will allow crews to maximize repair efforts throughout the weekend. In general, crews repair substations and major circuits first and then move to the smaller circuits in neighborhoods.

While there were some areas with significant damage — such as Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg, Richmond, Gloucester and the Northern Neck — damage assessments do not show the widespread, catastrophic damage that accompanied Hurricane Isabel in 2003. It likely will be Sunday before power is restored in these hardest-hit areas, with service in some homes and businesses in those areas not restored until Monday.

Dominion has more than 3,000 people working on the restoration effort. The numbers include about 800 Dominion crewmembers, more than 900 contractors, 250 tree contractors and more than 1,000 salaried people supporting the field crews and guiding the restoration effort. The company has also received assistance from American Electric Power, Georgia Power, Duke Energy and Progress Energy.

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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