Two flashes of light and loud booms were seen and heard across Northern Virginia last night (Thursday), including in parts of Arlington.
Home surveillance video shared with ARLnow by a local resident captured the flashes and booms just before 9:30 p.m.
Many locals also noticed their lights flicker, prompting a Reddit thread asking whether anyone else had experienced it. Residents in Arlington, Ashburn, Springfield and even some more distant locales all reported seeing or hearing it.
Dominion Energy says the flickering happened when one of its transmission lines tripped.
“One of our transmission lines that feeds a substation tripped but the automated system responded just like it was supposed to — meaning instead of lights going out, they only flickered,” Aisha Khan, Dominion’s media and community relations manager for Northern Virginia, told ARLnow. “The flicker could’ve been just the resurgence with the grid, ‘healing’ itself.”
What caused the line to trip is still under investigation, Khan said.
Dominion has not said where the line and substation are located, nor whether the flash and boom came from that equipment. ARLnow has asked the utility for those details, as well as whether data center power usage might have played a role.
In July, a larger disturbance was traced to a Dominion high-voltage transmission line serving data centers in Loudoun County. Equipment on the line failed on the morning of July 22, and the data centers’ own control systems switched them to backup power, according to Dominion. The resulting swing caused lights to flicker for about 10 minutes across much of the eastern U.S., according to an engineer’s monitoring data cited by NBC4.
Dominion has pursued power line expansions and new substations in Northern Virginia to meet data center demand, as ARLnow previously reported. The utility currently has nearly 30 grid upgrade projects underway in the region aimed at preventing outages, FOX 5 reported this week.
Dominion is also seeking state approval for its proposed $67 billion merger with Florida-based NextEra Energy. The County Board voted to intervene in the State Corporation Commission’s review of the deal earlier this month, citing rising electric bills.
Separately, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) signed an executive order today creating a data center “accountability framework.” Among other provisions, it directs Virginia Energy to evaluate best practices for grid reliability, “including ride-through and voltage protections,” FFXnow reported.
Video courtesy Patrick B.
