Dominion Provides Update for Power Outage

UPDATE Monday 5 p.m.: Here's an update from Dominion Power, about the power outage impacting hundreds Monday with temperatures in the 90s:

"Last night, we had close to 800 customers lose power as a result of a failed piece of equipment. We restored power to those customers within 6 hours," said Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson in an email to Patch.

"At 7:30 this morning, a transformer failed affecting 49 customers. We tried to make repairs without de-energizing the circuit, but at 12:15 we had to de-energize 425 customers served off the transformer in order to make safe repairs. We were able to re-route power to 200 of those within an hour. The remaining 225, plus the 49 originally affected will be restored when the transformer work is complete, in about an hour. Many of the customer who were affected last night were the same customers affected today. We do not know with certainty if the two outages were related, but it is possible."

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UPDATE Monday 2:30 p.m.: It appears that a power outage has returned for some of the homes where power was restored in the Idlywood area near Vienna Monday afternoon.

After about 800 homes lost power Sunday night, power was restored to about 750 homes by Monday morning; but as of about 2:30 p.m. Monday afternoon, 249 homes were without power, according to a Dominion Power.

Temperatures in the area were at about 96 degrees.

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UPDATE Monday 9 a.m.: Although power has been restored to most of the homes that went without power Sunday night in the Idylwood area near Vienna, there are still 49 homes without power as of 9 a.m. Monday morning, according to a Dominion Power outage map.

The region was struck by a series of pop-up thunderstorms Sunday night but there was no official word of the cause of the outage, other than "equipment failure."

Power should be restored Monday sometime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., according to Dominion.

Temperatures on Monday are expected to hit dangerous high temperatures. The region is under a Heat Alert by the National Weather Service, with "feels like" temperatures predicted to get as high as 108 degrees, according to the NWS.

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A cluster of about 800 homes in the Idylwood area, between Vienna and Falls Church, were without power Sunday night, according to Dominion Power.

Pop-up thunderstorms struck some areas Sunday night but it's uncertain what caused the outage. The DC metro area has been experiencing extremely high temperatures; at midnight, during the outage, it was about 82 degrees outside.

A power outage Sunday night also briefly struck a section of Old Town Alexandria where about 100 homes were without power temporarily as thunderstorms rumbled through; about a dozen homes remained without power around midnight there.

There was no estimate of when Dominion will have the power back on in the Idylwood area Sunday night.

Location (where the #2 is located on the map below) where hundreds of homes were without power Sunday night:

PHOTO: Patch archive