A few hundred Central Virginia Electric Cooperative customers lost power when high winds raked the Nelson County area and beyond over the weekend.
“Outages increased throughout the evening and overnight, reaching a total of 426 cooperative members served by the Piney River substation by early Sunday morning,” said Greg Kelly, a spokesman for the cooperative, which is based in Colleen in southern Nelson County.
Numerous outages occurred in western Nelson and Albemarle counties, with smaller outages in other areas the cooperative services, Kelly said.
“High winds brought down large trees in the mountainous area, breaking utility poles and dropping electric wires to the ground,” Kelly said in a statement.
“Crews from the cooperative’s 14-county service area [worked] overnight to clear the obstructions and repair damage to the power lines. Conditions have been difficult, dark and dangerous during much of the repair work but progress is being made.”
Crews encountered subfreezing temperatures and wind-chill factors. According to the National Weather Service, wind-chill temperatures ranged below zero
Fahrenheit.
According to Kelly, CVEC members with access to the Internet, by computer, smart phone, or through a friend or relative, can view an outage status and track the restoration progress at www.mycvec.com.
The CVEC website features a map that provides details on the location and number of services without power. CVEC does ask members to turn off large appliances that were operating before the power outage to reduce the demand on the system once power is restored.
During the abnormally heavy snows in 2009, crews worked 24 hours daily to restore power to thousands of customers, often in snow-covered and forbidding hilly and rural terrain in freezing temperatures.
Residents recognized their efforts later that year during the annual Fourth of July parade in Lovingston, for which linemen (present and retired) were named honorary grand marshals.
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