A nearly 3-mile stretch of the Washington & Old Dominion Trail has been out of commission this week, but pedestrians and bicyclists should be able to return soon.
Dominion Energy closed the trail from Mill Street NE in Vienna to Sandburg Street in Dunn Loring on Monday, Nov. 11 as part of its ongoing project to replace electric power lines between the Clark and Idylwood substations.
A Dominion Energy worker was injured by an electrical transformer explosion that occurred this morning (Monday) outside the Mars headquarters building in McLean.
Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department units were first dispatched to 6885 Elm Street around 10 a.m. Additional responders were sent to the scene minutes later after a firefighter reported concern about the building catching fire, according to scanner traffic.
The regional electric grid that supplies power to Virginia during times of extreme weather announced a 1,400% increase in some electric costs after its most recent capacity auction. But Dominion officials were quick to assure customers that they would not see an increase in their bills before the end of next year.
PJM Interconnection, which oversees the electric grid serving several mid-Atlantic states, including Virginia, announced the increase for its capacity market. Dominion buys electricity off of capacity markets during peak, or emergency, demands.
In a bid to cut energy costs by tens of thousands of dollars, the Fairfax County School Board finalized a deal with a local solar developer last month to outfit nine elementary schools across the county with 250-kilowatt (kW) solar panels.
The solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) comes years after the school board approved a series of much larger solar projects that were halted after Dominion Energy introduced new interconnection rules that substantially increased project costs, rendering the projects economically unfeasible.
Work on an overhaul of Dominion Energy’s electric transmission line between Vienna and Idylwood is expected to start next month, the utility says.
The project will replace the wires — known as a reconductor — that run parallel to a 3.9-mile section of the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, connecting the Clark substation at 375 Center Street near Caboose Tavern in Vienna and the Idylwood substation at 7701 Shreve Road.
The average Dominion Energy Virginia residential customer will soon see a charge of about $4.50 dropped from their bills. The fee was being collected to recover costs through the state’s participation in the regional carbon market.
On Monday, the State Corporation Commission, which regulates Virginia’s utilities, approved a request from Dominion to stop tacking the fee on customer’s bills to recoup the costs the utility racked up through participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which Virginia is no longer a part of.
More than 4,000 properties in Fairfax City lost electricity in a power outage that affected local traffic signals as well as residents and businesses.
The City of Fairfax Police Department announced at 5:40 p.m. that all traffic signs and signals have now been restored to “normal operations,” though power outages are still affecting homes and businesses.
(Updated at 4:45 p.m.) Local elected officials, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, gathered in Lorton on Wednesday to celebrate the introduction of 42 new electric buses to the division’s fleet.
These buses, which were funded by a $16.5 million federal grant announced in January, join the 18 electric buses already in operation. Although the division currently operates over 1,600 diesel buses, county officials emphasized that these new electric buses mark the start of a larger transition.
Fearing that new interconnection rules from Dominion Energy could derail its carbon reduction targets, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has asked Virginia’s utility regulator to step in.
In a near-unanimous vote, supervisors authorized Braddock District Supervisor James Walkinshaw on March 19 to send a letter asking the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to evaluate whether the new regulations create unnecessary hurdles for small renewable energy projects attempting to join the power grid.
Amid a surge in digital storage demand in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County is drafting stricter zoning regulations to enhance oversight of data center projects.
On Tuesday (March 19), the Board of Supervisors directed staff to update the county’s zoning laws to include new data center development criteria, such as increased residential buffers, size limits, energy efficiency standards and a mandatory noise study in the site plan.
