Islanders urged to conserve electricity for 3rd night as P.E.I.'s power supply stays unstable
Summerside mayor frustrated over Maritime Electric's handling of power situation
Residents of Prince Edward Island are still being urged to conserve power as electricity instability on the Island stretches into a third day and night.
While the City of Summerside is warning residents to prepare for rolling blackouts Wednesday evening, Maritime Electric CEO Jason Roberts said he does not think that will be necessary.
"Conservation, conservation, conservation. That's really key to us right now," Roberts said.
Residential and business customers across the province are being asked to:
- Turn off unnecessary lights.
- Unplug electronics, appliances or power bars that aren't being used.
- Not use large appliances like dishwashers, ovens or dryers.
- Shift non-essential tasks like laundry to non-peak hours.
The trouble began early Monday morning, when a major outage across western P.E.I. left more than 19,000 customers without electricity due to damage at Maritime Electric's Sherbrooke substation, north of Summerside. Power was restored by midday, but the Island's power supply has remained unstable — particularly for P.E.I.'s second-largest city.
Summerside generates much of its own electricity but also pays New Brunswick Power for any additional energy it needs, and that's transmitted to P.E.I. via an underwater cable system. However, Maritime Electric infrastructure is required to move the purchased electricity to Summerside's grid.
Roberts told CBC News on Tuesday that the utility must give first priority to supplying its direct customers, and Summerside is classified as what's called an "interruptible customer."
"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," he explained further on Wednesday.
"That's why today, with that limitation, they're not able to get the energy that they need."
On Wednesday afternoon, Summerside again warned residents to brace for rotational power outages if demand exceeds the grid's capacity. Residents were warned they could lose power for up to two hours between 4 and 10 p.m. AT.
In order to avoid blackouts, the city said it would shut all non-essential municipal facilities at 5 p.m.
Kids aren't going to their hockey practices, people aren't using the gym. We have to make really difficult decisions for our residents and also our businesses.— Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher
Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher continued to voice frustration about Maritime Electric's handling of the situation this week.
He told CBC's Island Morning that the city's solar farm has helped prevent blackouts during the day and its diesel generators have been running at full capacity.
"We shut down municipal facilities [Tuesday], so that means kids aren't going to their hockey practices, people aren't using the gym," he said Wednesday morning. "We have to make really difficult decisions for our residents and also our businesses."
On Tuesday, Kutcher had told CBC News that the utility that serves most of Prince Edward Island — with the exception of Summerside — initially planned to cut the city's power supply from 28 megawatts to just two on Tuesday night, while reportedly directing 14 megawatts to Cavendish Farms, a major producer of frozen food products based in New Annan.
That left the city bracing for outages while repair work continued on a damaged transformer at Maritime Electric's Sherbrooke substation.
A plan for two-hour rolling blackouts on Tuesday night was called off after Maritime Electric got back to city officials to say the utility would guarantee enough power to Summerside.
Kutcher said Summerside has argued for years that the city should not be classed as an interruptible customer.
The city applied to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission for permission to install its own transmission line, hoping to move power more cheaply. However, IRAC denied the application and this decision was subsequently upheld by the P.E.I. Supreme Court's Appeals Division in 2015.
We are here to help the utilities with any requests they may have. It is all hands on deck to get reliable power to Islanders.— Gilles Arsenault, minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Action
"If we had access to those undersea cables directly, and we did not need to be an interruptible customer with Maritime Electric, we'd be able to better support Maritime Electric by having some additional redundancy on the transmission system, and we wouldn't be in the situation we are here today," the mayor said.
He added that the underwater cable system should be a public asset serving the public good, not under the control of a private company.
"We have to speak to and respond to the interests of our residents, and that means keeping our residents safe and warm. Maritime Electric, at the end of the day, [has a] primary duty to provide value for their shareholders."
Summerside's choice, says CEO
But Roberts said Summerside's interruptible service type is the city's choice, and it could choose to pay more to subscribe to a firm, committed service from Maritime Electric.
"If they choose that, we will build and design the system to have those contingencies in place — not only for Maritime Electric customers, but also for the City of Summerside Electric Utility," the Maritime Electric CEO said.
That upgrade could require the addition of equipment such as transformers, which could take up to three years to install, Roberts said.
"It's important for, you know, Summerside Electric to look at the situation that they're in, understand what their risks are, and make the decisions as to what they need for their customers," Roberts said.
'All hands on deck'
Meanwhile, the province's minister responsible for energy, Gilles Arsenault, sent CBC News a statement about the issues on Wednesday.
"I have been in frequent contact this week with the City of Summerside, Maritime Electric and my colleague Minister [Bloyce] Thompson along with the Office of Public Safety," it said.
"We are here to help the utilities with any requests they may have. It is all hands on deck to get reliable power to Islanders.
"It is our understanding the outages have been due to mechanical issues; however, Maritime Electric can speak more on that," Arsenault's statement continued.
"As the hard-working folks at our electrical utilities resolve this outage, Islanders can help out by following the advice of Summerside Electric and Maritime Electric on electricity conservation measures during times of peak demand."
'A common challenge'
The pressure on P.E.I.'s electricity grid is not unique but "a common challenge" for North American utilities as more jurisdictions shift away from fossil fuels and toward electrification for things like vehicles and heat, Roberts said.
"We are working very diligently to upgrade the system along the way," he said.
P.E.I. currently has four underwater cables that have over 500 megawatts of transfer capacity from off-Island generators, the CEO said. The two original cables — which will need to be replaced in the next few years — were installed in 1977 and two new cables were installed in 2017, Roberts said.
While the cables have over 500 megawatts of transfer capacity, the switching station has a limitation of 300 megawatts, so the switching station will need to be updated in order to get more energy across the Northumberland Strait, he said.
At the same time, he said there is a "security of supply challenge" that will require installing more capacity.
With files from Island Morning and Maggie Brown