UPDATED: 4,000 NOVEC Customers Get Power Back on Sunday

Updated 10 p.m. July 1

More than 4,000 Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative customers had powered restored on Sunday.

As the sun set on a difficult weekend for many, 5,464 NOVEC customers were still in need of power—a fraction of the 37,000 who lost it because of Friday's massive storm.

Restoring service for the remaining customers will take time, Larry Shaffer, manager of NOVEC system operations said.

  “We still have in excess of 200 outage locations to close.  Many of the remaining outages affect only a few customers, so while progress will continue to be steady, we are far from finished," Shaffer said. "Our service restoration team is focused on the task at hand and has performed exceptionally well."

"With the extra resources we now have working on the system, I am confident we will get the job done safely and as quickly as possible.  We understand the challenges an extended outage represents for our customers and our work will continue 24/7 until the last customer is back on line," Shaffer said.

 Lingering Verizon phone system problems have affected inbound and outbound calling, hampering service restoration efforts by making it more difficult to communicate with customers and employees in the field, NOVEC spokesman Mike Curtis said in a press release issued Sunday. 

“We’re finding ways to work around it, but we’re hoping Verizon can fix the problem soon.  Unavailability of reliable phone service certainly adds another layer of difficulty to service restoration,” Shaffer said.

 Original Story

More than 80 percent of the nearly 40,000 Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative customers that lost power as a result of Friday night’s storms can now flip a switch an actually have light.

 The totally number of outages for NOVEC has shrunk to just around 7,000 customers, NOVEC spokesman Mike Curtis said.

There are about 64 customers in Manassas Park who don't have power, according to NOVEC's online outage center.

 Line technicians were able to restore power to 2,000 customer on Sunday morning alone, according to NOVEC data.

 The electric company’s line technicians as well as contractors from as far away as Georgia are working around the clock to get things back on track after a line of storms known by the metrological term, marched from west to east and

.“It is a challenge to coordinate such a system-wide outage response, but our team has responded very well,” NOVEC manager of operations Larry Shaffer said Sunday. 

 “All of the workers involved in this service restoration are highly motivated and have performed admirably. I can’t say enough about the crews in the field.  Working around power lines is always a very dangerous job - especially so in such extreme weather conditions.  We understand the frustrations customers experience during an extended outage, and I can assure them that the NOVEC team will be on the job until all service is restored.”

 In the Operations Center, the use of proven outage management technology enables the company to deploy its resources with maximum efficiency, Shaffer said.

 “The Dominion Virginia Power system that delivers power to three of our Loudoun County substations suffered extensive damage and we don’t have an estimate yet as to when those feeds will be restored,”  Bob Lewis, operations coordinator for NOVEC said Sunday.   

“I can assure our customers we understand the duress they are under and are doing everything we possibly can to get customers back in service as quickly and safely as possible.”