LaSalle residents lament power outages

When LaSalle resident Mason Hoppe returned home from a vacation over the Civic holiday, he found his television and cable box had been fried.

"I'm assuming that there was some sort of power surge that hit the house," said Hoppe, who lives on Canada Street.

But he's not the only one.

Elenora O'Neil of Lisgar Street has lost a refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, stove and an assortment of smaller electronic devices over the years, costing her family thousands of dollars.

"It's a major financial burden of course and a major inconvenience," said O'Neil.

There has been a spike in outages recently. According to Essex Powerlines, that number is actually decreasing. More than 100 outages were reported in 2015. Three years later, that count has reduced to 64.

The outages range from small flickers which only last a second to major outages which have gone on for hours.

Here is the breakdown of outage causes:

• 36 per cent are due to loss of supply from Hydro One.
• 25 per cent are scheduled outages due to repair work or hooking up new subdivisions or developments.
• 17 per cent are from squirrels causing short circuits.
• The rest are either weather-related or due to equipment failures.

"We have no control over those outages that occur outside our service territory," said Joe Barile, general manager of Essex Powerlines.

Barile said recent big outages were due to problems with 230 KV Hydro One lines along the 401.

He added if his company keeps maintaining the equipment and trimming trees , the number of outages should continue to decline.

Essex Powerlines uses computer software which allows them to pinpoint problems in the system so they can identify the cause faster and fix it more quickly, according to Barile.

LaSalle Mayor Ken Antaya said the town's number of outages are in line with the provincial average, adding the number of trees in the town have an effect on the number of instances. For Antaya, it's about maintaining those natural areas.

"Some things are out of our control. Other things are within our control and we try to do the things we can within our control to put their [the customers] minds at ease that we're providing the best service we can," said Antaya.

In an email to CBC News, Hydro One said the company is working to implement "modern monitoring equipment" which will help identify the location of an outage, adding a detailed patrol of the line will also take place to identify any faulty equipment or trees which could cause an outage.

Hydro One states seven of the eight recent outages were due to storms and 33 of this year's outages were quick flickers. But Barile said if there are enough of those quick flickers over time, they can damage electronic equipment.