Climate changes; outages increase
It’s apparent that President Donald Trump didn’t consult with Maritime Electric before Thursday’s announcement that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. The president and many Republicans are deniers when it comes to climate change and global warming. Or they simply don’t care, preferring to place archaic coal and dying jobs ahead of common sense.
John Gaudet, Maritime Electric’s president and chief executive officer, has first hand knowledge about the impact of climate change on P.E.I. He says major storms and outages are on the rise across the province and he has the numbers to back it up.
It’s becoming the norm to hear about ‘once in a lifetime’ rainfalls or the ‘storm of the century’ bringing powerful winds, record snowfalls, prolonged freezing rain or torrential rains to the Atlantic region. We seem to be in the eye of an increasingly active and violent storm path coming up the eastern seaboard.
All this has a direct impact on power outages for Islanders. Last fall, an early winter storm, which brought prolonged freezing rain, wet snow and high winds, saw some Islanders – especially in Kings County – lose power for days. Weakened trees came crashing onto power lines and rows of poles came tumbling down in wide swathes of the county. It should add impetus to a more robust pole replacement program.
So it was positive news this week when Maritime Electric announced it is looking to do a better job keeping the lights and heat on across P.E.I. when storms strike. Mr. Gaudet told a shareholders’ meeting the number of outages from major storms is increasing, as is the length of those outages. Many of the company’s 79,000 customers are seeing outages reach five, seven, 10 or more hours in duration each year. The increases in outages have seen more and more Islanders invest in expensive generators because of the increased uncertainty in keeping power or getting it restored.
The company is so concerned that it is looking at options to back up or re-route power to affected customers. Right now, it’s difficult to provide alternate supplies because many Maritime Electric customers are on a single line. That makes it hard to isolate outages and feed power in from other sources. Backup systems will take time, money and planning to increase the number of distribution lines into communities.
The company is playing catch-up in a number of areas, especially providing updates or information on social media, although that has improved over the past year or so. The website continues to be difficult to navigate but a new and improved version is promised for September.
It would be a good idea for Maritime Electric to let customers know the cause, or estimated time of reconnection, in addition to locations of outages.
When people are sitting home in the dark without lights, TV or heat, they want to know what’s going on and iPhones can easily connect to websites.
Perhaps Mr. Gaudet could send a copy of his report down to Washington for Mr. Trump’s bedtime reading.