Summerside continues energy independence push with substation repair timeline uncertain

Officials in P.E.I.'s second-largest city have lingering questions about the stability of the supply of power that passes through the Maritime Electric grid on its way to Summerside. 

Amid weather disruptions Tuesday morning in the midst of a storm that swept across Prince Edward Island, Summerside Electric announced it was shutting down power to most of the city's downtown to repair damaged equipment.

That shutdown lasted only 30 minutes, but the bigger problem of keeping the city electrified remains far from temporary. 

"The reality is that the failure of this transformer, Maritime Electric's transformer, has basically cut our supply, restricted our access to the power we buy from New Brunswick by about 50 per cent," said Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher. 

Maritime Electric, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Fortis Inc., serves as the conduit for Summerside to access the electricity it buys from New Brunswick to supplement the power the city generates itself through wind, solar and diesel equipment. 

But damage to one of the Maritime Electric transformers in Sherbrooke has put Summerside's access at risk.

It all started just over a week ago, when an outage across the western part of the Island left more than 19,000 customers without electricity. 

Power was restored by midday, but the Island's supply remained unstable while crews worked to fix the damaged substation.

Transformer had 'reached end of life' 

The transformer was built in 1976 and is the oldest on P.E.I.'s grid. Last August, Maritime Electric applied to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission for permission to spend $6 million over two years to replace it, calling it a "critical aged asset that has reached end of life and cannot be operated to failure."

WATCH | A 49-year-old tranformer, a city fighting for access to the power it buys, and no quick fix:

Here's the latest on Summerside's fight for power independence

3 days ago

Duration 6:59

Since early last week, Mayor Dan Kutcher has been speaking out about Summerside's efforts to control its own electricity. He tells CBC's Sheehan Desjardins that Maritime Electric hasn't given the city a choice about getting its own transmission lines for power.

Maritime Electric still hasn't said how long repairs on the damaged transformer could take.

In a 2020 filing, the utility estimated repairs could take six months to a year. It's not clear what the nature of the current breakdown is, or whether it matches the scenario outlined in Maritime Electric's filing. 

Since the transformer failed, Kutcher said Maritime Electric has cut the power it provides to Summerside from 30 megawatts down to 16. 

"Now if the wind dies down and there's no solar, we're going to run into some really difficult moments," he said. "We just continue to fire everything that we have. We can't keep doing this for months and months."

We haven't been offered the choice to have firm transmission.— Dan Kutcher, Summerside mayor

The mayor is also taking issue with Maritime Electric's assertion that Summerside chose to operate as an "interruptible" power customer in exchange for lower rates — although that cheaper cost comes with the risk of the city's power supply being cut off during high-demand periods.

"That's what the Summerside utility has chosen. With that comes not only a lower price, but also comes the risk that if there's constraints on the system, then you will be interrupted," Jason Roberts, Maritime Electric's president and CEO, told CBC News last week. 

WATCH | Here's the latest on Summerside's fight for power independence:

A 49-year-old transformer, a city fighting for access to the power it buys, and no quick fix

3 days ago

Duration 2:34

Maritime Electric still hasn’t put forward an estimate for how long it will take to repair a transformer approaching its 50th birthday. With that piece of equipment out of commission, the City of Summerside is still facing the prospect of rolling blackouts. Submissions from the utility to P.E.I.'s regulator suggest a fix could take up to a year, while replacing it could take twice as long. CBC's Kerry Campbell reports.

But emails provided by the City of Summerside show that officials asked two years ago to switch to uninterruptible transmission despite the higher cost.

The response from Maritime Electric: "Due to the system limitations, we are unable to grant the request."

The city asked Maritime Electric to begin an immediate study on what it would take to upgrade Summerside's power service to make the change possible. There was no word from Maritime Electric in the past week on how that's proceeding.

WATCH | How does P.E.I.'s electrical grid even work? CBC explains:

How does P.E.I.'s electrical grid even work? CBC Explains

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Duration 3:07

With recent outages shining a light on the fact that the P.E.I. electrical grid is nearing capacity, you may be wondering how the Island gets power in the first place — or what the difference is between Summerside Electric and Maritime Electric. Here's a breakdown from CBC's Cody MacKay.

Kutcher said what the city really wants is its own access to the government-owned submarine cables that bring electricity from the mainland so that Summerside doesn't have to rely on Maritime Electric.

"We haven't been offered the choice to have firm transmission," he told CBC News on Tuesday. "Here we are in a situation where all of our backups are running at full tilt, where our redundancy — the system that we've built to protect our customers — is working, but it doesn't have redundancy afterwards. 

"So we want to make sure that… Summerside Electric gets direct access to those publicly owned cables." 

In the meantime, Summerside residents continue to face an increased risk of rolling blackouts anytime demand exceeds the city's ability to make up for the ongoing energy shortfall, until the Sherbrooke transformer can be fixed.