RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion has restored power to 66 percent of its customers who lost electric service because of Hurricane Irene.  As of 2 p.m., service had been returned to more than 800,000 of the 1.2 million Dominion customers in Virginia and North Carolina whose service was affected by the large and intense storm.

The company remains on track to meet its targets of restoring service to 90 percent to 95 percent of all Irene-affected customers by Friday evening and 75 percent of all affected customers by tomorrow evening.  Nearly all customers in the remaining areas, which suffered the most extreme damage, will have their electric service restored by the end of the day Saturday.

Storm restoration for Virginia customers in the Washington, D.C., metro area will be completed this evening.

Individual restoration times are available for customers whose power is expected to be returned today.  Individual restoration times are expected to be available Wednesday for all other customers whose power remains out because of the storm.

"Dominion has mobilized an army of dedicated employees, contractors, retirees and mutual assistance workers to restore power to our customers," said Rodney Blevins, vice president for distribution operations for Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power.  "We understand that next to having their lights back on, what customers want most is information about when they will be back on.  We are working hard to get the answers for them."

Dominion has identified approximately 20,000 damage locations caused by Hurricane Irene and completed repairs at 7,700 of them thus far, including over 3,200 yesterday. A list of today's work locations is available by clicking on http://www.dom.com/storm-center/crew-work-locations.jsp

Customers in areas where work is scheduled today can receive an estimated restoration time by calling 1-866-DOM-HELP (1-866-366-4357).  Customers who do not receive a restoration time today when they call will learn their estimated time of restoration tomorrow.

More than 7,000 Dominion employees, contractors and workers from other utilities are involved in the restoration process.  

Customers are urged to call Dominion at 1-866-DOM-HELP (1-866-366-4357) if:

• Your power is out.  Do not rely on your neighbors to report your outage.
• Your electric meter appears to be damaged.
• Wires are down.  Treat all fallen wires as though they are energized.

Storm restoration information is available online at http://www.dom.com/storm-center/index.jsp.  An outage information map is available on Dominion's website at http://www.dom.com/storm-center/dominion-electric-outage-map.jsp.

A video description of the storm restoration process is available online at http://www.dom.com/storm-center/how-we-restore-power.jsp.

Dominion (NYSE: D) is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 28,200 megawatts of generation. Dominion operates the nation's largest natural gas storage system and serves retail energy customers in 15 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's website at www.dom.com. 

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SOURCE Dominion Virginia Power and Dominion North Carolina Power