Customers won’t foot bill for power meter checks
Home inspections looking at cables for potential ground shifting damage
SaskPower says it will not pass any costs on to customers after spending $15 million inspecting 17,000 homes at risk of fire due to ground shifting.
Ryan Blair, operations and maintenance manager for SaskPower, said the company is absorbing all the costs associated with the work that came about after a series of fires last summer.
There have been a total of 80 “incidents,” 10 of which resulted in fires, primarily in Regina.
“We are now just continuing to see the ground settling and we’re continuing to see repairs that need to be made, but we feel that the risk of having a major incident is significantly lower,” said Blair.
Blair said an incident is anything where the wires are pulled down inside the meter box, causing an electrical short. These shorts typically cause only a power outage.
In its inspections, SaskPower has focused on older homes built in the 1960s and 1970s that were considered most at risk because of their underground copper wiring. In 2018, SaskPower anticipates inspecting 4,000 more homes in every part of the city.
Blair said the risk of any more fires is extremely low as all known homes with copper wire have been repaired.
“We feel confident that we’ve found the majority of the ones that we know were causing the fires. I can’t say all of them because it’s a big city, (but) we’ve hit the areas where we know they predominantly are.”
The problem was created by ground-shifting, brought on by record dry conditions. Some smaller meter boxes left little room for slack in the wiring. Without that slack, the ground shifting resulted in damage to the copper wiring, rendering it a potential fire hazard.
No amount of rain can permanently fix this problem. Blair said there is no chance for the wires, once pulled down, to come up again.
“What does happen underground when clay settles, it’s like a jack effect, so if it gets moist it’ll just expand and then it’ll contract again around the wire and pull it down,” he said. “It’ll just continually pull down.”
SaskPower’s solution to this problem is installing expansion boxes. “(This) is a two-foot box that will sit just below the meter box and it allows for up to a metre more wire that can go inside,” said Blair, “so the ground settling will in fact be inside the box instead of inside the meter box up top.”
This gives more slack for the wire to be pulled down by the continually shifting ground without risk of causing a short.
Blair clarified that these incidents have nothing to do with smart meters, some of which malfunctioned and caused fires a few years back.
“It’s not a smart meter issue, it never has been. The smart meters were removed in 2015. This is solely a ground settling issue,” he said.
If you see a change in your meter, even if it has previously been inspected, SaskPower is encouraging residents to call 1-888-757-6937. These changes could include the meter box being tilted, twisted or blackened.
It’s not a smart meter issue, it never has been. The smart meters were removed in 2015. This is solely a ground settling issue.