Restoring Power

We work hard year-round to deliver safe, reliable service, but when big storms strike and damage equipment, outages can happen. When they do, our entire focus is on safely and quickly restoring service based on a detailed and well-rehearsed action plan.

We know that being without power is never easy, and we appreciate your patience and understanding as we respond.

Power restoration during storm situations usually happens in the following order:

1. Our first priority is to restore power to critical customers in our communities. These customers provide health care and safety services to us all and restoring power to them first enables them to help many others. Our critical customers include health care facilities, school boards, municipal infrastructure, and police and fire services.
2. We then focus on major power lines and substations that serve larger numbers of customers.
3. We give higher priority to repairs that will get the largest number of customers back in service as quickly as possible.
4. We then restore power to smaller neighbourhoods and individual homes and businesses.

The diagram below shows the typical order of power restoration on our system.

Referring to the diagram, first priority goes to fixing the problem at point A, on the transmission line. With this line out, none of our customers can have power restored. Next, we fix the problem at B on the main distribution line running out of the substation. Houses 2, 3, 4 and 5 are affected by this problem. Next, we'd fix the line at C, affecting houses 4 and 5. Finally, we would fix the service line at D to house 1.

This repair sequence can mean that some homes may be without power while others around them have power. The goal is to bring power back to as many customers at a time as is possible, with special attention given to certain critical facilities.