Dominion meets record winter peak demand for electricity from customers

RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Dominion Virginia Power Tuesday met a record winter peak demand for electricity from its 2.4 million customers while cold arctic air blasted the region.

Dominion supplied 19,730 megawatts of electricity between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Tuesday.  That is an increase of about 1,650 megawatts over the previous winter peak demand record of 18,079 megawatts, which was set between the same hours on Feb. 6, 2007.  The all-time peak demand record is a summertime mark of 20,061 megawatts set on July 22, 2011.  One megawatt supplies enough electricity at peak for 250 homes.

In addition, Dominion also established an all-time record for energy usage over a 24-hour period. Total energy usage for Tuesday was 419,791 megawatts. The old record was 392,347 megawatt hours set on July 23, 2011.

From the start of the cold spell Monday evening through noon Wednesday about 35,200 Dominion customers lost power. While not all of these outages were directly attributed to this arctic weather, 1.4 percent of Dominion's 2.4 million customers in Virginia did experience a power interruption during the extremely cold weather. Dominion worked around the clock and has restored power to all of the affected customers.

Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 23,500 megawatts of generation, 11,000 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline and 6,400 miles of electric transmission lines.  Dominion operates one of the nation's largest natural gas storage systems with 947 billion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves retail energy customers in 15 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's website at www.dom.com.

SOURCE Dominion Virginia Power