Church Street NE is closed until 3 p.m. today (May 1) between Glyndon and Park streets.

The temporary closure started at 9 a.m., according to a tweet from the Town of Vienna.

The road is closed “so that Dominion Energy can do emergency repairs to replace a faulty switch,” the tweet says.

Next week, a different portion of Church Street will be closed for four weeks. Starting Monday (May 6), the 300 block of Church Street will be closed from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. on weekdays for installation of a new sidewalk, storm sewer, curb and gutter and driveway aprons.

Image via Google Maps

(Updated at 3:30 p.m.)  A power outage hit the largely residential neighborhoods in northeast Vienna, as well as a portion of Tysons, today (April 26).

The estimated time of restoration is between 1-4 p.m. As of noon, Dominion Energy reported 2,006 customers in the area without power.

The power outage was resolved on Dominion’s website around 1:15 p.m.

“All but 165 of the 2,000 [customers] were restored in about an hour,” Charles Penn, Sr., a spokesman for Dominion Energy, told Tysons Reporter.

A tree that fell on a power line caused the outage, Penn said.

https://twitter.com/carencey/status/1121801503998660608

Image via Dominion Energy

(Updated 5:20 p.m.) As Tysons grows, it’s sucking up a lot of juice.

According to Dominion Energy, by 2022 the existing load on power lines from the Tysons and McLean areas is expected to exceed 300 megawatts, which means the energy provider needs to build an additional power source to avoid violating mandatory standards.

The Idylwood-Tysons 230 kilovolt (kV) Project would add a new 4.3 mile transmission line underground, right through the heart of Tysons.

The project was approved by the State Corporation Commission in September. Now, Dominion spokesman Charles Penn said the company is engaged in the engineering phase. Penn said an open house for the project is planned for sometime this summer.

Construction on the project is tentatively scheduled for this fall, with completion planned sometime in 2022.

More than 5,000 Dominion customers are without power in the Falls Church area on the coldest morning of the season so far.

Dominion reports that some 4,000 customers are without power in Fairfax County and nearly 1,800 are without power in the City of Falls Church. The cause is listed as a “damaged power line” and restoration efforts may stretch into the afternoon.

Via Twitter, the city said it had deployed generators to key intersections where traffic signals were dark. It encouraged residents who did not have heat to take shelter at local libraries or community centers, while also encouraging residents to check on vulnerable neighbors.

POWER OUTAGES THURSDAY AT 8AM :: @DomEnergyVA reports a number of power outages in the City. We are deploying generators to a number of traffic signals; please pay attention and be cautious.

Report power outages to Dominion on their website or 866-366-4357. pic.twitter.com/iAAbPScjCV

— City of Falls Church (@FallsChurchGov) January 31, 2019

Fairfax County is scheduled to make nearly $3.9 million off of the sale of a property in Tysons West to Dominion Energy, in order to turn the vacant plot into an electric substation.

The item was scheduled for consideration at today’s (Tuesday) Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting, but was deferred by Hunter Mill District Supervisor Cathy Hudgins without discussion to March 5 at 4 p.m.

The property includes two parcels proffered to the county via rezoning processes. According to the agenda item, the funding raised from the sale will be allocated to public facilities projects in the Tysons area.

The new substation is planned to be constructed just south of Spring Hill Road near Leesburg Pike. The property is west of the Dominion Square development.

According to the staff report:

Because the parcel is not needed for right-of-way purposes, and since the small size of the parcel and its isolation from other public land make it unsuitable for any other public use, the County will serve the greater public benefit by conveying the parcel to Dominion Energy for redevelopment.

Photo via Fairfax County

The McLean Citizens Association meeting tonight (Wednesday) is scheduled to feature an illuminating discussion on replacing the local streetlights with LEDs.

The meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the McLean Governmental Center (1437 Balls Hill Rd).

Over the next few years, Fairfax County plans to work with Dominion Energy to replace its streetlights with LEDs.

A resolution under consideration at tonight’s meeting would endorse the County’s plans and recommend lower levels of blue light emissions. The aim of the resolution would be to improve the light’s impact on humans as well as local animals.

In 2016, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted recommendations for LED color temperatures of 3,000 Kelvin or lower, based on studies indicating that blue light emissions from LEDs at higher color temperatures can create glare, impact human sleep patterns, and disorient animal species. […]

Now, therefore be it resolved that the MCA supports Fairfax County streetlight conversions to LEDs with lower blue light emissions, at approximately 2,700 Kelvin.

The resolution recommends updating the lighting ordinance to encourage warmer color temperatures as well as shielded fixtures to prevent upward light, adaptive controls such as dimmers, timers and motion sensors.

Plans are in the works for Fairfax street lights to be converted into more energy-efficient LEDs, but it could be five years before LED light touches streets in some parts of the county.

In August, Fairfax County signed an agreement with Dominion Energy to convert its streetlights to LED technology, but Matthew Kaiser, information officer for the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services, said the plans are still in a very preliminary stage with no timetable established for which areas will be converted first. Kaiser said the conversion process is expected to be a five year program.

The current street lights are high-pressure sodium, metal halide and mercury vapor. LEDs, electric lights which draw their name from the light-emitting diode, often have a higher installation cost than traditional lights but are longer lasting and more energy efficient.

Under the new agreement, Dominion will charge $130 to convert an existing streetlight, though streetlight fixtures that fail will be converted at no cost. Previously, Dominion charged $12 in electricity distribution for basic LED streetlights based on last year’s utility rates, but under the new agreement maintaining LED light costs would be reduced to $7.

Fairfax County has also begun working on installing LEDs inside County facilities. Over 2,277 LED bulbs have been installed since the program began last July.

Kaiser said Dominion Energy informed the County that the earliest they could begin conversions would be sometime after February 2019. Funding for the conversions has been requested to be included in the FY 2020 budget.

Currently, Dominion installs, owns, operates and maintains most of the 58,000 streetlights in Fairfax County, though who owns the lights after Fairfax contributes to the conversion still remains in discussion.

“We anticipate information/recommendations regarding LED streetlight conversions/installations will be presented at a future Board committee meeting in early 2019,” Kaiser said via email. “Whether the lights remain Dominion owned or convert to some percentage county owned, additional funding would still be required to go to LED.”

Photo via Fairfax County