Richmond, Va., February 8, 2010 — Thousands of Dominion Virginia Power employees and contractors have worked around the clock through the weekend to restore electric service to 271,000 of the 287,000 customers whose electricity was interrupted by the record-breaking winter storm.

Most of the outages occurred in the Northern Virginia and Charlottesville areas.

The remaining customers are expected to be back in service by Tuesday night — except in isolated locations where storm effects prevent safe access.

Dominion crews have worked closely with the Virginia Department of Transportation to access difficult locations, allowing steady progress on outage restoration. 

Crews are working at more than 1,300 repair sites to restore power as quickly as possible.

They will continue to work around the clock, using helicopters and off-road vehicles where necessary, until all customer service has been restored.

An estimated completion time is now available for each of the remaining repairs. Customers can request this information by calling Dominion's customer service line at 1-888-667-3000 to learn when their homes will have power restored.

Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of more than 27,500 MW of generation. Dominion operates the nation's largest natural gas storage system and serves retail energy customers in 12 states.