Electric News Releases - 1999

December 15, 1999

Virginia Power 100 Percent Ready For Y2k

RICHMOND, Va. – Critical systems at Virginia Power are 100 percent ready for the millennium rollover.

"All of our hard work over the past seven years has culminated in our being Y2K ready," said William S. Mistr, vice president-Procurement and the head of the utility's Y2K team. "We believe power outages related to the Year 2000 century date change are highly unlikely."

Remediation and testing of critical systems and components at each of the company's 84 generation units has been taking place throughout the year during regularly scheduled maintenance outages. Technicians completed work on the last remaining generation unit this week.

Despite extensive planning, Mistr cautions that weather-related outages that may occur should not be misconstrued as Y2K-related problems.

Virginia Power regularly confronts the threat of natural disasters, storms, ice and mechanical problems that could disrupt power. The company has developed extensive contingency plans to handle such problems and has taken the same, proactive approach to the management of potential Y2K events.

On New Year's Eve, the company will have a team of 1,300 employees in place at 90 company locations to monitor computer systems and equipment. Throughout the rollover, Virginia Power will be reporting its Y2K status to the North American Electric Reliability Council, the Southeastern Electric Reliability Council, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the State Corporation Commission.

Virginia Power is the principal subsidiary of Dominion Resources Inc. (NYSE: D), an energy business with headquarters in Richmond. 

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