Drones help to restore power to residents in Virginia

A big snowstorm hit northern Virginia this week causing widespread outages in the state. Now Dominion Energy employees are using drones to help to restore power to the residents.

Drones help to restore power to residents in Virginia

Kevin Curtis, Dominion’s vice president of electric transmission explains how drones offer an advantage in the restoration of power to the residents in northern Virginia.

“It’s quicker, it’s safer, and it gets you access to areas that you might not otherwise get to until further into the restoration effort,” says Curtis. 

The drones provide a first view of the situation that the crews are dealing with as certain regions are very difficult to access due to heavy, wet snow, and downed trees, and power lines.

Curtis spoke with FOX 5 from Charlottesville, where he evaluated damage with the use of a drone on Wednesday.

“Some of the rights of ways we saw today, you wouldn’t have been able to walk down it and get access to the facilities until the tree crews got in and got the trees out of the way. You know, the drone can navigate over top of all of that,” he said.

The storm affected more than 400,000 Dominion customers in total.

“Everybody was staged up and ready to go,” Curtis added. “There’s just no easy way out of a storm and damage like this other than brute force, and you just have to get in the trenches and move the trees and get access to facilities and put them back up.”

According to a spokeswoman, Dominion expects virtually everyone to have power restored by Thursday. Some may not be ready until Friday, according to her.

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Photo credit: Fox 5