Outages hard to count, harder to fathom
So, you've lost power once, but not yet twice this year, and it's been out, in total, a titch more than four hours. Congratulations, you are Nova Scotia Power's average customer. You can give their customer service line a call and expect an answer within 30 seconds.
Of course, the above lightly salted, foggy references do not include what Nova Scotia Power (NSP) calls major event days (MEDs) or worse, extreme event days (EEDs). Nova Scotia's had — as of Sept. 30 — by NSP's tally, four MEDs and two EEDs thus far in 2019. You likely lost power on some or all of those days too, but they don't count in figuring the average. Confused? Me too.
Let's start again.
If, so far in 2019, you've lost power not quite twice (1.68 times) for a total of 4.04 hours, and for no discernable reason whatsoever, you are NSP's average customer. You can call them as often as you want and seven times out of 10 your call will be answered within 30 seconds. They promise not to hang up on more than one call in 10, which leaves two calls and roughly the same number of power outages completely unaccounted for.
In Nova Scotia, we hold our privately owned (thank you former premier Donald Cameron) power utility to rigorous performance standards. Outside of major and extreme storms — that would be the kind of weather that might knock out power — your electricity can only disappear inexplicably, on average, twice a year, but not for any longer than four-and-a-half hours combined. I don't make the rules.
As for MEDs and EEDs, all bets are off. But, in those cases, most customers should get their power back within 48 hours of somebody else losing theirs. One, maybe two in 10 customers might wait longer after a MED, and more than a third could stay in the dark for more than two days after an EED.
Halifax lawyer William Mahody sent me in search of NSP's performance standards which, to the corporation's credit, are there for all to find and few to fathom just a couple of clicks away from the NSP homepage.
They haven't been updated since Sept. 30, so they don't reflect last week's widespread outage, which grabbed the attention of the aforementioned Mr. Mahody, among many others.
But Mahody's attention actually matters. He advocates on behalf of all Nova Scotia Power (NSP) ratepayers and he was doing his job last week when he fired off a “What gives?” letter to
NSP's regulator, the Nova Scotia Utilities and Review Board.
The wind did blow overnight Dec. 9-10, but those of us who rolled out of the rack in the dim early hours of that Tuesday morning and hit the light switch to no noticeable improvement in visibility, did wonder “What gives?”
Well, according to Judith Ferguson, NSP's executive vicepresident of regulatory, legal and business planning, the wind blew briskly throughout that night. Whether it blew in extremis or merely majorly is yet to be determined but you can bet a tank of generator fuel it was one or the other.
In fact, it blew out the lights for about 52,000 customers and most of us fumbled in the dark for 3.2 to 5.4 hours, again according to Ferguson, although I can testify that some went without power longer than that.
Mahody, on behalf of us all, asked the utility board whether NSP is providing a reasonable level of service, given a stiff wind, not to mention salty air or a clap of thunder, can send us scurrying for flashlights and faux fur coats.
He told The Chronicle Herald's John McPhee that more than a few NSP customers felt last week's power blowout was a sign of a pretty wimpy power grid. The same thought sprang to my mind late one summer afternoon when the power was gone before the thunderclap was heard. No one saw the lightning, but it must have been a single direct hit. No more thunder came but some hours passed before the power returned.
Of course, if you've read to here, you may already suspect that I fall outside the norm, of NSP customers that is.