Weather, not aging gear, caused outage
Murray Mandryk’s column from Dec. 18 contains some assertions that need to be addressed.
SaskPower welcomes the recommendations outlined in the provincial auditor’s report and was already taking steps to address most of them prior to the audit. We consistently seek new and better ways of doing our work, and we will strive to improve data management and analysis relating to the maintenance of our above-ground distribution equipment.
For Mr. Mandryk to conflate the Dec. 4 outage with the auditor’s report is wrong. The auditor’s report focused exclusively on distribution assets, which carry power from the transmission system to customers.
The massive power outage we experienced recently came about because of an extremely unique weather event that caused damage to our transmission system — the much larger, higher-voltage lines that carry power from our power stations to substations. An outage of this magnitude has not occurred in Saskatchewan for about 40 years.
When asked whether the contents of her report could speak to the major outage, the auditor reinforced the distinction between generation, transmission and distribution, and unequivocally stated that her report focused on distribution, not the transmission system affected by the weather event, and that “The information is just not there to make that direct link.”
For Mr. Mandryk to imply that the auditor felt that the outage was related to her report is simply inaccurate.
The auditor found that our process for tracking and maintaining wood poles, which are by far our most significant above-ground asset, was mature and complete. She also confirmed that SaskPower’s maintenance strategies are consistent with industry practices and qualified staff are used to maintain our assets. I would also note that maintenance plans for other distribution assets are prioritized annually, with the highest priority on safety and reliability.
We are very open about the ongoing infrastructure challenge we face with maintaining equipment and 157,000 kilometres of transmission and distribution lines in Saskatchewan — much of which was built in the 1950s and ’60s. We meet this challenge by investing approximately $1 billion every year to upgrade and grow our infrastructure. And these investments are necessary going forward each and every year.
I would however like to thank SaskPower employees and contractors for their stellar response to the Dec. 4 outage. The hard-working women and men who diligently responded to this outage deserve all credit for restoring power as quickly as possible and ensuring that no community was without power overnight. SaskPower understands the difficulties and concerns related to longer-term outages, I would like to assure the public that safety is at the forefront of everything we do.
I would like to reiterate that we welcome the auditor’s comments. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. As a company we work hard every day to continuously improve what we do in order to provide safe, reliable and affordable electricity to our customers, and the public can rest assured that we will continue to do so. Mike Marsh, Regina Marsh is president and CEO of SaskPower