Reliable
Customers expect reliable power — their lives and businesses depend on it. Reliability ranks at the top of our customers’ priorities, and ours.
In 2023, we maintained outstanding reliability, with customers in our electric service areas in three states having power 99.98% of the time, excluding major storms.
With demand for energy projected to reach unprecedented levels in our Virginia service area, we are taking steps to accelerate the deployment of resources that will help serve the rapidly increasing load. On July 28, 2023, Dominion Energy Virginia’s (DEV's) transmission zone within PJM (the Dom Zone) met a new all-time summer demand peak of 21,993 MW — the fourth consecutive year summer demand has set a new record. In the same hour, DEV also set an all-time summer peak of 17,775 MW. These records were broken again in July 2024, during which the company registered six new all-time peak demand records.
Furthermore, South Carolina became the fastest-growing state in the nation in 2023. Dominion Energy expects customers’ energy demands to continue to grow as new jobs and industry attract new residents and supporting businesses to the state.
When major storms strike, extensive training enables our crews to restore power rapidly. After Tropical Storm Ophelia struck our service area in North Carolina and Virginia, we were able to restore power to 96% of the 170,000 customers affected within 24 hours. To help make our grid more resilient, our Strategic Underground Program opens in a new window identifies the most outage-prone tap lines and works with customers and neighborhood groups to move those lines underground, protecting them from overhead damage and freeing our restoration crews to work on other projects. The Grid Transformation Plan in Virginia helps prevent outages by hardening grid components and making other technological improvements.
Operating diverse types of generation helps maintain reliability by avoiding over-reliance on any given power source. It also helps maintain affordability by insulating our customers and the company against outsized price shocks for a particular fuel source or generation component.
Our changing fuel portfolio — particularly the shift to gas and renewable generation — has already helped us cut emissions while maintaining the reliability our customers depend on. Reliable and operationally flexible natural gas generation resources are key to supporting the addition of non-dispatchable, intermittent renewable resources. Adding more renewables will help us deliver cleaner energy, and adding battery storage will help address the challenges of fluctuating output from solar and wind. Our nuclear power stations’ carbon-free baseload power helps maintain further diversity in our generation mix. In 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) extended Surry’s operating license through the early 2050s. In August 2024, the NRC extended North Anna’s operating license through 2060. Also in 2024, Dominion Energy announced it had issued a request for proposals to evaluate the feasibility of developing a small modular reactor at North Anna.
Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world. To give you a sense of how unique this is, consider that the region is bigger than the next five largest U.S. markets combined. It is also larger than the next four international data center markets combined.
Investing in Infrastructure
In 2023, we invested $1.9 billion in electric transmission infrastructure in Virginia and the Carolinas. In Virginia, our Grid Transformation Plan is making the grid smarter, more responsive, more transparent to operators, and better able to manage the complexity of integrating distributed renewable generation.
We have identified up to $43 billion in capital investment opportunity between 2025 and 2029, approximately 80% of which is tied to zero-carbon generation and power delivery infrastructure.
We have created a Grants Office to seek federal funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. As of May 2024, we have been selected for negotiation of an award on two of our applications, one for a bundle of technologies that would improve strategic asset planning and deployment through more coordinated interconnection, and one for installing electric vehicle chargers.
We are working to make the Virgina power grid smarter and more responsive through our Grid Transformation Plan.
Faster, More Sustainable Substations
Our 2023 Chair’s Excellence Award for innovation went to a team of employees that developed an innovative approach to streamline the construction of new electric transmission substations. Their new digital substation design for a Drop-In Control Enclosure, or DICE, has demonstrated the potential to reduce substation construction time by up to four weeks and eliminate more than 100,000 feet of copper control wiring. A training version has been installed at our training center in Chester, Virginia, and the company is constructing a dedicated fabrication facility in Loudoun County, Virginia, to keep up with new substation demand.
We have also made substantial investments in our gas distribution systems to ensure that customers can count on service even in challenging conditions. In the Dominion Energy South Carolina (DESC) service area, our gas business has continued to improve service reliability while experiencing robust (3.35%) customer growth in 2023. DESC’s gas operations did not experience any unplanned system outages in 2023 related to system issues or other deficiencies. The only unplanned system outages in 2023 resulted from excavation damage — which we continue to substantially reduce over time.
Employee Spotlight
Diana Casique
Persistence and grit took Diana Casique from hopeful immigrant to nuclear engineer.
“There is always a silver lining in every dark cloud.” And if there isn’t one, Diana Casique — an engineer at Dominion Energy’s Millstone nuclear power station in Waterford, Conn. — will find a way to make one.
A native of Mexico, Diana watched her brother go off to college while she was told she would have to wait for a chance that might never come. Unwilling to settle for less, she began attending English classes. One day, she ran across an advertisement for an English as a Second Language class at Western Connecticut University. With the money she had saved from working in a government literacy program, she registered for the course, applied for a student visa, and bought a plane ticket.
Within a month, she had run out of money. She took a waitressing job and began asking customers if she could volunteer for them at their places of work to learn about their businesses — all while she continued studying English, earning an associate’s degree in electrical technology, and attending night classes in electrical engineering. Twice, she found herself homeless.
Engineering degree in hand, she entered the power industry. In 2021, she joined Dominion Energy, where she coordinates Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspections and helps ensure the Millstone plant is operating properly. When she isn’t working, she enjoys refurbishing mid-20th-Century furniture. She loves “the clean lines, the simplicity and functionality.”
“I do what I do because it has given me purpose,” Diana says.
Diana Casique has found her purpose at Dominion Energy where she helps ensure the Millstone plant is operating properly.
Employee Spotlight
Megan Yeager
Lineworker Megan Yeager doesn’t let anything stand in her way.
“While life is full of obstacles,” Megan Yeager says, “I try to just look at the end goal and stay focused.” That determination played a key role in getting her where she is today: making sure Dominion Energy’s high-volume customers such as hospitals and government agencies have the reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean energy to power their operations.
“I was in restaurant management and working long hours that included very late nights,” says Megan. “As a single mom this was very difficult to maintain, and I just felt like I needed to make a change to better our lives.” An ad for Dominion Energy’s lineworker training program at a nearby community college sparked her interest. Before the school would save her a spot, she had to obtain a commercial driver’s license. “I stopped by DMV and picked up the book to read so I could pass the written part of exam. I went home to read it and got an appointment for the next day to take the exam.” To the surprise of no one who knows her, she passed.
While she initially thought she would be working high above ground in a bucket truck, her current role has her descending below ground to maintain network distribution assets. It’s a job that traditionally has been filled by men, and Megan is happy to break the mold. “Don't close yourself off [in] a box because of job stereotypes. Roles are not gender-specific; they are for everybody.”
In her spare time, Megan and her 17-year-old daughter — who have been working through Virginia’s state parks as part of the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Master Hiker program — participate in trail clean-ups.
Doing hard things is second nature to a woman who grew up riding dirt bikes and playing sports. And her underground work can be challenging: “Everything you can imagine can be in the vaults with the vented tops. People walk their pets down the sidewalks, then there's trash, leaves, dirt, bugs, sometimes even a rat or snake.” Still, the rewards make it all worthwhile: “My favorite part is knowing that we provide a service to all our customers, a service we appreciate and need to power our lives every day,” said Megan. “As a customer, I know that sometimes we don't realize how much we appreciate electricity until the lights go out. I really enjoy knowing that the work I do every day is keeping the lights on for everybody.”
Megan Yeager's favorite part of her role as a lineworker at Dominion Energy is knowing that her work makes a difference in the everyday lives of our customers.
In a job that is traditionally filled by men, Megan Yeager is happy to break the mold.