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.