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Dominion’s Strategic Undergrounding Program: 10 Years of Progress

After a decade of strategic undergrounding, Dominion Energy has the results to prove its impact. Learn how their efforts have cut outage times, improved resiliency, and what’s next for utilities looking to follow suit.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

2:00 PM ET / 1:00 PM CT / 11:00 AM PT

Duration: 1 hour 

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Summary

Dominion Energy was the first utility in America to engage in a Strategic Undergrounding Program (SUP) with the goal of reducing restoration times for major outages.

Now, after over 10 years of activity, the impressive results show appreciable improvement in system restoration times.

Join Dominion and PDI2 to learn about the SUP and how outage times have been reduced.  How have Dominion customers and other stakeholders responded to the results of the effort? What will Dominion do next?  What other kinds of resiliency programs are they engaged in?  And, what advice does Dominion offer other utilities considering similar undergrounding and resiliency programs?

Speakers

david_walker

David Walker
Director–Grid Resiliency
Dominion Energy Virginia
                                                                                                  
David Walker is director–Grid Resiliency, Dominion Energy Virginia. He is responsible for leading the company’s grid resiliency efforts, which includes the strategic underground program, deployment of middle-mile fiber optic infrastructure, and various grid transformation related programs such as mainfeeder hardening and voltage optimization. Walker joined Dominion Energy in 2001 as a project designer and has worked in various groups across the Electric Distribution and the deregulated retail businesses. Walker earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Radford University and has an MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

Leslie Carter

Leslie M. “Les” Carter
Strategic Advisor, Grid Resiliency
Power Delivery Group

Leslie M. “Les” Carter is Strategic Advisor Grid Resiliency, Power Delivery Group. He has been with the Strategic Underground Program since its inception and is responsible for the regulatory, finance, data, and metrics aspects of the initiative. Carter joined Dominion in 2001 as Senior Financial Analyst at Dominion Telecom and has held various financial, project management, and managerial positions. In 2006, Carter became Manager-Electric Distribution System Reliability, handling reliability initiatives and programs culminating in substantial service reliability improvements. After Dominion Energy experienced significant storm related outage events in both 2011 and 2012, Carter spent 2013 leading a team charged with the formulation of an initiative to convert the most outage-prone overhead lines to underground. In 2014 the Strategic Underground Program began when Carter assumed his current role. He holds a BS in Construction Management from Brunel University, London, an MBA and a Masters in Public Management, both from the University of Maryland, and is a PhD Candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.

mike_beehler
Mike Beehler
National Spokesperson
Power Delivery Intelligence Initiative
 
Mike Beehler P.E. is the national spokesperson for the Power Delivery Intelligence Initiative and the chief opportunity officer for Mike Beehler & Associates LLC. He started his career designing and building transmission lines and substations for Tucson Electric Power and the Hawaiian Electric Co. and then spent more than 20 years designing T&D infrastructure and consulting on emerging trends at Burns & McDonnell. He has written, presented, and consulted on reliability-centered maintenance, critical infrastructure protection, and program management.

In addition, he is a well-known industry writer and speaker on the early definition of the smart grid, 3-D and building information modeling applications in T&D, and development plans for smart cities. Most recently, he is sought for his strategic leadership and vision on the application of emerging technologies in changing business models to include the integration of distributed energy resources, augmented/virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. He authored the book, The Science of the Sale.

Beehler is a registered professional engineer in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, and Alabama. He also is a Fellow in the American Society of Civil Engineers and a member of IEEE and CIGRE.

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