Maritime Electric struggles with P.E.I. power grid

A power outage Thursday night was followed by a second bump in the grid Friday around lunchtime for residents in Charlottetown and eastern P.E.I.

The first outage affected 22,000 homes and businesses at 10:46 p.m. Thursday, said Maritime Electric spokeswoman Kim Griffin.

Several customers in the Sherwood area reported hearing a loud ‘boom’ and shared the experience on social media.

“That was actually really helpful,” said Griffin.

While the utility has their own internal systems and protocol, Griffin said they have often been helped by posts on social media or information learned when customers report an outage.

Thursday night, clues from the public helped crews zero-in on the West Royalty substation.

A porcelain unit on top of a large transformer had exploded, causing the bang. Crews discovered the issue in an underground cable leading to the transformer.

The contact centre on Kent Street was activated immediately and remained open until 1 a.m. Friday.

Power was restored to a few customers at a time, beginning at 11:40 p.m. All customers were back online by 12:10 a.m. Friday, Griffin said.

Once technicians had isolated the problem, they were able to reroute power and get the lights back on.

“It’s part of the redundancy built into the system,” said Griffin.

As of Friday morning, she expected around 30 technicians would continue repairs throughout the day.

A SECOND OUTAGE

At noon Friday, just as crowds were flowing out from the Gold Cup Parade in downtown Charlottetown, the lights went out again.

Griffin said at the height of the outage, around 31,000 customers in and around Charlottetown and parts of eastern P.E.I. were affected.

“It was a really challenging day for our customers,” she said, acknowledging for some businesses, Gold Cup Day is their busiest day of the year.

The second outage was caused by an overload on the system. As the usage piled onto the substation, the system started to shut down to protect itself, said Griffin.

Because technicians were already working on the problem, the Friday lunchtime outage lasted only around 45 minutes. Most customers had electricity by 12:30 p.m. and power was restored to all customers by 1:10 p.m.

“The system has been holding,” said Griffin at 4 p.m. Friday.

ALARMED AND RE-ENERGIZED

While most customers are glad to get their lights back, for the fire department it can mean a busy few moments checking on fire alarms.

The surge of electricity restoring can trip alarms.

At the chemistry labs at UPEI, however, the power outage has a more serious effect. The ventilation system stopped, and labs filled with an odour. Deputy Fire Chief Tim Mamye said fire crews attended the building and began to use their equipment to air out the building. Once the power came back on, and the ventilation started up again, things went back to normal.