Halifax EMC is currently experiencing a large-scale outage affecting a significant portion of its system due to a transmission outage on Dominion Energy’s system.

Dominion currently has significant and important transmission line upgrades being done in the county, and the outage is not directly related to that work.

However, due to those ongoing projects, the Halifax EMC system is currently operating on a temporary, simplified one-way configuration.

This means HEMC is not on its normal transmission feed, which significantly reduces the ability to reroute power from other sources. “As a result, we are dependent on a single transmission source feeding into the county from the Aulander area.”

Under normal conditions, HEMC can shift load between multiple substations to minimize outages, and Dominion has multiple transmission feeds supporting HEMC’s  distribution grid. In the current configuration, those options are largely unavailable, increasing both the number of members affected and the duration of the outage.

“Our crews are actively working to restore service where limited backfeed options exist,” HEMC said. “We are working on a plan to restore approximately 400 accounts through some temporary work to connect one Halifax county circuit to a Warren county substation.”

Full restoration for the majority of members will require Dominion to restore transmission service.

The current estimated restoration time is approximately 4-5 p.m. today, based on information from Dominion. “We understand how disruptive this situation is and share your frustration. While the outage originates from the transmission system, HEMC is actively coordinating with Dominion Energy, taking all available actions within our system to restore members where possible, and providing updates as new information becomes available.”