Power being restored across Saskatchewan

The light bulbs were going on for more and more Saskatchewan residents Friday.

As of Thursday at 10 p.m., SaskPower reported there were roughly 16,000 customers without power across the province due to 384 outages caused by the storm that blew through Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

By 6 p.m. Friday, there were about 2,600 customers without power — and that number was expected to drop as the evening went on.

“The winds have died off in most parts of the province, which is great,” SaskPower spokesperson Scott McGregor told the Brent Loucks Show on Friday morning. “It’s going to allow our technicians to go out and conduct the necessary repairs to get the lights back on for the last remaining customers.”

McGregor said work was continuing to restore the power in areas around Beechy and Weyburn. He noted SaskPower is “optimistic” those areas would have their power back at some point Friday.

Since Wednesday, SaskPower’s call centre had received more than 75,000 calls about the outages which, at their peak, affected as many as 90,000 customers.

The weather made it difficult for SaskPower technicians to make the necessary repairs.

“When you see the weather being what it is and preventing us from going out and doing our jobs safely, it’s very frustrating,” McGregor said. “But that said, safety is our priority so we have to make sure that conditions are safe for technicians to do the work they need to do.”

There were a number of reasons for the power outages, from what McGregor called “line gallop” (when the wind blows the power lines so strongly that they come into contact with each other, causing a short) to poles and towers falling down to wires simply snapping.

The latter issue was caused by the snow and freezing rain that many areas received during the storm.

“When you put the weight on the wire and you introduce movement to it, it creates conditions for the conductor to snap,” McGregor said. “In cities, a common reason for power outages are trees and other things blowing onto power lines and causing a short.”

Crews were prepared in some cases with spare poles and wires, but some outages were caused by issues that technicians couldn’t repair quickly in some areas.

In larger centres, outages were limited because of SaskPower’s ability to do some switching.

“It’s kind of like if a road goes down, you can then reroute traffic to go around and still have the people get to their destinations,” McGregor said. “Power is kind of the same way in that if one section of the grid goes down for some reason, we’re able to do some switching and reroute power from other areas to restore power to customers.

“It’s not the case in a lot of circumstances, but in the larger centres, because of how tightly packed the infrastructure is, it’s a possibility that that might have been what got some people’s lights back on so quickly.”