Power Outages (Arlington, Reston, Fairfax: power lines, co-op, house)

[caseystab26]

I was wondering if No. Virginia gets lots of power outages? I live in CT and am looking to relocate to NoVa (Reston). We just had our power restored after 50 hours of no power, as a result of Hurricane Irene. Most of NE has above ground utilities and frequently loses power in storms because of the old infrastructure.

[ChristineVA]

It really just depends where you live and the age/location of your power source.

I live in a neighborhood that was built in the mid-90s so much of our power is underground. We finally do hook up with above ground power but it's not close to my home. Something bad has to happen on a major source for us to lose power. I'm in Prince William County.

Now I have several friends who live in some of the older neighborhoods in Fairfax. My one friend in Lorton loses power quite often--with any storm. But it's just for a few hours here and there.

My other friend, who lives in Fairfax near George Mason seems to lose power during major storms and Irene was no exception--no power for 9 hours.

But, overall, NoVA doesn't seem to get the power outages that Montgomery County, MD and DC get. Most of their issues have to do with older, exposed power sources as well as very large, old trees that are constantly falling down.

[cdmurphy]

I agree with ChristineVA. It really depends on where in NoVA you are. In my old neighborhood in Falls Church, we lost power (and had bad power surges) a lot. Old infrastructure, lots of trees, etc. In Brambleton, all the lines are buried and we don't have a lot of mature trees (yet) to cause trouble.

I've also noticed a difference in service level among the area power companies; we had Dominion in Arlington and Falls Church, and now we have NOVEC (Reston is in Dominion territory). Due to the hurricane, NOVEC had 3,950 customers without power (out of 143,500 customers total); Dominion had 173,000 customers without power (out of 825,000 customers in Northern Virginia). NOVEC is a co-op and addition to being owners (and getting cash back every year), we get a free folksy magazine each month with down-home recipes and ads for farm equipment. Oh, and a 99.99% reliability record.

[ajzjmsmom]

I agree with everyone, in the neighborhood we live in all of our power lines are underground and we have had very few outages, if anything merely a flicker. We live on the west side of 95 and we lost power during Irene for 3 minutes, however about 2 miles from our house they were still without power on Monday.

[JfromReston]

You indicate you are looking to relocate to Reston. Most all utilities in Reston are underground and the infrastructure is only 40-50 years old so we do well keeping electricity flowing. We didn't loose electricity at all with Irene.