Lessons learned from blackout, Saskpower says
One year after massive outage, focus on collaboration, education
One year later, Saskpower says it has learned several lessons from the most severe power outage to hit Saskatchewan in more than 25 years.
“The outage that occurred last year on Dec. 4 (2018) was really unprecedented for Saskpower at the time,” said spokesperson Joel Cherry. “It was an opportunity for us to take several lessons from that, not only for Saskpower, but for the provincial government and municipalities and other agencies,” he added during an interview Monday.
At the height of the widespread power outage, Saskpower estimated approximately 200,000 customers were left without electricity.
The cause was attributed to ice and frost build up on shield wires, causing them to sag and break and create grid instability. Cherry said many days without sunlight and a lot of humidity in the air led to frost buildup as thick as 10 centimetres in some locations.
The system load reportedly dropped 1400 megawatts following the outage, which hit around 9 a.m. and although power was restored by 10 p.m. the same day, Cherry said the frost caused massive amounts of damage that took the next several days to fully repair. The damage ultimately tripped the Boundary, Shand and Poplar River stations, leading to the massive power loss.
The outage cut a wide swath of the south and central parts of the province, stretching from Swift Current to Humboldt to the U.S. border and points in between, including Moose Jaw and Estevan. Outages also extended up the eastern side of the province, wrapping around — but not including — Saskatoon.
“One way that we’ve improved things since then is we’ve reinforced collaboration between ourselves and other entities, whether that’s other levels of government, other agencies, etc.,” said Cherry. “We want to make sure that everyone is aware of their own and Saskpower’s roles during a major outage.”
Cherry said Saskpower is also putting more of a focus on proactively monitoring all forms of severe weather systems that might be headed to Saskatchewan through direct contacts with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
By monitoring other jurisdictions, Saskpower also learns how other utilities deal with similar incidents, like the widespread outage that hit Manitoba last month.
“We need to remember the uniqueness of that event,” said Cherry of Saskatchewan’s outage. “That said, we’re always ready to respond when necessary. We can call on our neighbours as Manitoba did to us during their incident.”
During last year’s outage, Regina neighbourhoods in the far southeast, northwest and southwest went about their business, while thousands in other areas, including the downtown, went without power for hours. Many of the city’s essential services, including police, fire, hospitals and EMS, switched to backup power.
Prisoners at Regina’s provincial court were held in place because deputy sheriffs didn’t want to risk moving anyone up darkened staircases and businesses around the city posted closed signs on their front doors.
Schools without power let out early, university classes were cancelled and traffic delays plagued the city as lit intersections turned into four-way stops.
“Some people are choosing not to remember their basic Driving 101 skills,” said Regina Police Service spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich at the time.
Saskpower said its outage centre received 20,000 calls between 9 and 11 a.m. that day, which is equal to all of the calls it received during the entire previous month.
Since the incident, it has submitted a report to the Northern American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). According to Cherry, filing a technical report of this nature is common practice.
Reports filed with the NERC are not made public by the body making the report, or by the NERC itself “due to confidentiality and security reasons.”
The report details the damage caused by fog and frost in the days leading up to Dec. 4, lists the impacted transmission lines and the sequence of events that caused the grid instability that lead to the major outage.
According to Cherry, the NERC accepted the report’s findings that the outage was a result of a weather event and there was “no identified protection mis-operations or unintended operations.”
Asked what changes Saskpower has made to better respond to future incidents, Cherry said it is building a more diverse electrical grid with more wind power and a couple natural gas plants. But with a such a unique circumstance, it’s hard to say what they could have done to prevent it, he added.
But they can do more to help people through such an emergency should it ever happen again.
“One thing that we want to work with the province and municipalities on is educating the public about what their supposed to do in the event of an emergency,” said Cherry.
Having an emergency preparedness kit that will last at least 72 hours is a must for residents. Cherry said the province is taking the lead on increasing its reach to new Canadians who might not be familiar with Saskatchewan winters and, as a result, not as prepared for event like a power outage.
Wednesday marks the one year anniversary of the outage.