Electricity restoration after a hurricane involves a number of critical steps that must be followed for maximum efficiency and the safe return of service to customers.
Outage Centre
Learn about various outages and the restoration process in the event of an outage.
What Is The Storm Restoration Process?
Electricity restoration after a hurricane involves a number of critical steps that must be followed for maximum efficiency and the safe return of service to customers. To expedite the restoration process, where possible, we carry out several of these steps simultaneously, but it is essential that we observe the restoration protocol.
Hastening the process without following these steps could significantly compromise the integrity of the power system, your safety, and our restoration efforts in the long run.
Checking and Repairing Power Plants & Main Transmission Lines
Our first priority is to inspect the entire power system for damage. This is necessary so we can first identify and fix any damage to the power plants and the main transmission lines that take power from our generating stations. If there are problems with these parts of the system, then it may be physically impossible to generate and get power to you.
Getting power to essential services
Once it is safe to start turning the lights back on, electricity is first restored to the main lines that provide electricity to essential services such as hospitals, airports, communication systems, and water supply facilities.
Fixing Large Power Lines Serving the Largest Number of Customers
The next stage in our restoration is to get as many customers as possible restored quickly by repairing those large distribution lines that serve several communities.
Fixing Smaller Power Lines
Having fixed the larger power lines, attention is now turned to fixing the smaller power lines serving smaller groups of customers.
Learn more about how our crews work to safely restore our customers after an outage.
Outage Centre
Learn about various outages and the restoration process in the event of an outage.
Restoring Your Home Or Business?
We work to get your power back on as quickly and safely as possible, and soon after your outage begins you may see crews driving by your property or in and out of your neighborhood without restoring power. That’s not unusual. Crews may be searching for the cause of the outage, or need to work at a nearby location before power can be restored to you and your neighbours.
Sometimes the power may be off only at your home or business. There are a few reasons this could happen, such as fuses or circuit breakers may have switched off, or damage to the lines or equipment serving your home. If you notice damage to the equipment feeding electricity to your home or business, call a qualified electrician to assess it. Your electrician handles work that needs to be done from the meter to inside your house, including your circuit breakers and home wiring. We take care of everything else.
Prepare your home for power restoration
You should make sure your home is ready to safely receive electricity once power has been restored.
This causes less stress to the power system and ensures that all customers get restored without unnecessary delays. You may want to leave your front porch light on so you will know when power is restored. When in doubt, or when leaving the home for an extended period, you should switch off your power at the main breaker.
Maintenance/Planned outages allow us to perform maintenance or upgrades on our utility infrastructure...
Outage Centre
Learn about various outages and the restoration process in the event of an outage.
Why are planned outages required?
Planned outages allow us to perform maintenance or upgrades on our utility infrastructure (poles, lines, transformers etc.) This work is necessary as we continue to provide customers with a reliable electrical supply.
Where possible, the Company does all that it can to avoid the disruption of electrical supply to our customers. However, sometimes it is necessary to turn off the power to customers for us to carry out this work.
Are customers informed when there is a planned outage?
We inform all customers who will be affected several days before planned outages.
Customers are informed via notices, social media, print media and/or radio ads. This is done to allow customers to make appropriate arrangements for the period of the outage.
At a minimum, customers can expect to be notified at least 48 hours before a planned outage takes place.
What should I do to prepare for a planned outage?
What should I do if I have a question about a planned outage?
Contact our Emergency and Trouble Calls Section at 626-9000.
There are many reasons the power to your home or business might go out, including factors that are both in and out of our control.
Outage Centre
Learn about various outages and the restoration process in the event of an outage.
What Causes Outages?
There are many reasons the power to your home or business might go out, including factors that are both in and out of our control. Our teams work hard every year to reduce the number of outages by making investments in new technologies, equipment upgrades and replacements, and even tree trimming to help make the electrical system more reliable. But outages can and do happen for various reasons.
Weather-Related
Many outages are caused by weather events, and the biggest cause is trees and branches contacting power lines, usually from strong winds. Outages can also be caused by lightning strikes, high winds, hurricanes or other extreme weather conditions.
Salt Contamination
Salt contamination is a common issue with coastal utilities. Salt water is a great conductor of electricity that can cause electrical shorting on parts of our system designed to protect it, such as insulators. Wind blows salt onto equipment over a period of hours or days, and when the temperature rises, the moisture in the air causes arcing which leads to outages. When it rains, the salt usually washes away and resolves the issue, but continued moisture in windy conditions can also blow more salt on the equipment causing the issue to reoccur.
Non-Weather-Related
Outages can also be caused by motor vehicle accidents impacting poles or equipment, equipment failure, construction activity, and trees or animals contacting power lines and equipment.
Planned Outages
To help prevent unplanned outages, we sometimes need to disconnect power to certain areas temporarily while our crews safely perform maintenance or make upgrades to equipment. While the safety of our customers and employees is our first priority, we make every effort to ensure planned outages are as short as possible and take place at times of least inconvenience to customers. In situations like these, we’ll call affected customers beforehand to let them know the expected duration of the outage.