HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — A Henrico County woman is fed up with ongoing power outages at her home which she said have led to discomfort, anxiety, and even changes to how she lives day to day.
Angela White showed CBS 6 the bulky cords, portable fans, and a cooler scattered around her house and on standby in the event of a power outage.
“We have battery packs, flashlights, candles," she said.
Her refrigerator has even been permanently pulled from resting up against the wall.
"To plug it in to our generator, it just has to stay out of the way. We keep the power cord here on the floor," White said.
It's the way her family lives, she said, all because of the constant and frustrating power disruptions.
“It's almost like the power is controlling me in my own home," she said.
White said she moved into her house off Portugee Road in the county's East End in January.
Since then, she has grown concerned with how frequently the electricity, supplied by Dominion Energy, has gone out.
“We started to get outages that would cause things to flicker on and off," she said. "And then they would start going out for an hour to two hours, up to four hours, and it was happening during days where the weather was beautiful.”
The problems have caused White to buy an expensive generator, which she said has been used ten times so far.
She said her family has also taken measures to reserve energy at the advice of Dominion.
“I feel like at this point, I sort of live in a cave. Nothing is really plugged in, the lights are always off, and even that doesn't change anything," White said.
According to White's customer history report, disruptions in her service area have increased significantly in recent years.
Between 2022-2023, there were nine recorded outages or momentary interruptions.
Between 2024-2025 so far, that number has jumped to 32.
“I feel uncomfortable, I have anxiety. I'm not enjoying my time here in my new home," White said.
CBS 6 reached out to Dominion on White's behalf, and spokesperson Craig Carper said the company "has been aware of the reliability issues on Portugee Road for some time."
He said the outages were caused by the weather, falling trees, and animals. When asked what caused the sharp increase in interruptions beginning in 2024, Carper attributed it to variations from the typical weather pattern including more thunderstorms occurring in 2024 and 2025 compared to previous years.
Carper said Dominion has taken and is taking several short-term and longer-term steps to address the issues in the area including tree trimming, installing a wildlife guard on exposed equipment, and undergrounding projects that will improve reliability for over 100 customers. The undergrounding projects could take up to 18 months to complete.
"Upon completion of our projects, the customers will be served from a much closer substation with less overhead line exposure. This will cut the distance from the substation to the customers from over 6 and a half miles to a mile and a half. This also removes the overhead line exposure that is difficult to access for restoration and maintenance purposes from these customers," Carper said.
White said she and other neighbors have speculated that the construction of a data center just down the road is impacting service, saying, "once the center started up, the outages were increasing."
However, Carper said data center construction is unrelated to the power outages as data centers are serviced directly by a dedicated substation separate from those that serve residences.
White said it's not lost on her that these inconveniences are happening as the company is requesting to raise residential rates by an average of $21 per month in an effort to build capacity amid infrastructure demands and inflation — which she opposes.
"It angers me," she said. “And I just feel that no one's listening, nothing's being done, and everybody is just moving forward and moving on with it, and I'm not okay with that.”
White added she has not received any offers from Dominion to apply credits to her bill for the increase in outages. Dominion said that is not the company's practice as bills are usage-based, and customers are not charged for the time they are without power.
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