Downed line blamed for widespread power outage

36,000 customers affected; whether you had power or not depended on the circuit your power is fed from

A power outage that left more than 36,000 Peterborough Utilities and Hydro One customers in the dark Wednesday night was caused by the loss of a major transmission line feeding one of the city’s two substations, officials said Thursday.

The downed 230 kilovolt line fed into the Otonabee substation and in Peterborough, the impact was amplified by a backup line being out of service for planned work, PUG vice president of customer and corporate services David Whitehouse said.

About 23,708 Peterborough Utilities customers were without power and approximately 16,189 Hydro One customers from as far away as Norwood, Lakefield, Buckhorn and Curve Lake First Nation were left without power at about 7:30 p.m.

In Peterborough, much of the downtown, East City, south and west ends as far west as Brealey Drive plunged into darkness.

The outage kept firefighters busy responding to calls of people trapped in elevators and collisions at intersections without working traffic lights — one crash occurred soon after the power outage at the intersection of Monaghan Road and Lansdowne Street.

Some 150 people were evacuated from Market Hall as a panel discussion about wild rice in Pigeon Lake featuring playwright Drew Hayden Taylor — who’s written the play Cottagers and Indians — was about to get underway, general manager Chad Hogan said.

Fortunately, it was a scheduled night off from St. James Players’ Shrek the Musical at nearby Showplace Performance Centre, so the outage did not have an impact there, general manager Emily Martin said.

The Balsillie Family YMCA on Aylmer St. closed early too due to the power outage.

YourTV had to cancel its live interview with Otonabee Ward councillor-elect Kim Zippel when the power went out midway through the Politically Speaking one-hour show. YourTV plans to reschedule the interview.

Peterborough Utilities crews were able to restore power to many city customers by “backfeeding” the system through the city’s other substation on Dobbin Road, Whitehouse said, pointing

out they could only do so much without overloading it.

The Otonabee substation supplies about 60 per cent of the city’s power, while Dobbin supplies about 40 per cent, he added.

Trent University reported that power had been restored by 9 p.m. at the main Symons Campus in Peterborough.

About 7,000 city customers remained without power until Hydro One corrected the root problem, which also included a breaker failure, senior media relations supervisor Tiziana Baccega Rosa said Thursday.

She was not aware of the exact location and cause of the downed line as of mid-afternoon, but was informed it was discovered by crews on patrol.

Power was restored to about 7,800 local Hydro One customers by 12:37 a.m. before full restoration at 3:37 a.m., Baccega Rosa said.

Lakefield was back online by 11:40 p.m. and Norwood 1:30 a.m. Both villages are serviced by Peterborough Utilities.

Whitehouse said the city’s “basket-weave” of connections are the reason why some pockets, or long strips, had power while other areas did not. In some cases, that may even had been the case with neighbours who live across from each other.

“It’s the dynamic of a built-out electrical system,” Whitehouse said. “It really depends on where you are being fed from.”

The outage provides an opportunity to remind residents of the importance of having an emergency kit in their home, particularly with colder conditions arriving and storms becoming evermore violent, he said.

That means storing non-perishable food items, flashlights and battery backups in a plastic container, for example.

“It’s important to ensure you have those things on hand,” Whitehouse said.