Halifax residents frustrated by outages call for improvements to NSP grid
Awful and unnecessary.
That’s how Louis Beauchamp felt about having no power for more than 24 hours.
Post-tropical storm Lee barely made landfall when a cluster of 4,000 plus homes in north and west-end Halifax lost power. The blackout that included Beauchamp’s home on Oxford Street happened around 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The next morning, just past 9 a.m., Beauchamp was outside doing yard work, waiting for the power to come back on. Just down the street the traffic lights were out at a busy intersection.
The storm didn’t justify such widespread outages, he said. The hype around Lee never materialized in the province’s capital. While definitely a storm – top wind gusts of 117 kilometres per hour were recorded at the Halifax airport — it was not as bad as expected. Throughout Saturday HRM was generally hit by the same weather cycle — heavy gusts with rain, followed by a lull.
With storms like these increasingly common Nova Scotia Power needs to strengthen its grid, says Beauchamp.
“The grid need to be more resilient. “The weather is getting worse and worse all the time. We shouldn’t have to be dealing with outages like these, nowadays.”
Sandra Murphy agrees. She lives a block away on Summit Street. Sunday morning a couple of power lines went down on her block. She made out OK but like her neighbour, she feels NSP’s grid needs an overhaul. There are simply too many outages to keep the status quo, says Murphy.
“I know it’s expensive, but it would make a lot of sense putting the lines underground, “said Murphy. “We know that more and more storms like these are going to come through here.”
Jacqueline Foster, spokesperson for NSP, pointed out that that power was restored to the area by 1 p.m. Sunday . She said high winds throughout Saturday delayed restoration time.
Foster said NSP take its job of managing the grid very seriously. The utility invests $180 million across the province each year on reliability, including investments in more robust equipment, maintenance and tree trimming, she said. This year it will spend $32 million on tree trimming, up from the average of $20 milion to $25 million.
John, a long time resident of Dublin Street, is skeptical that those investments will mean much. John, who did not want his last name used in the story, said he’s resigned to losing power anytime there’s a storm. He doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“I feel like we shouldn’t have lost power for a whole day but this keeps happening, so you just get on with it.”
Nova Scotia Power says it’s using equipment that’s designed to better withstand severe weather, including bigger, stronger poles and more robust insulators designed to better withstand storms.
