‘Touch and go weekend’: Maritime power utilities avoid rolling outages amid cold snap

Most Maritimers didn’t lose power amid the snowstorm on Monday.

It was a weekend of all-time demand for some power utilities across the Maritimes amid the bitterly cold weather.

Thankfully, despite warnings or watches from utilities asking people to conserve power at peak times, rolling outages were not required, but it was close.

“Demand was the highest it’s ever been,” says Dan Kutcher, Summerside, P.E.I., mayor. “It was a touch and go weekend.”

Summerside owns its utility.

The mayor says people adhered to the request to use less power, causing a three-to-four per cent drop, which helped avoid four-hour rolling outages.

But demand is rising across the board, especially when more people rely on things like heat pumps and electric vehicles.

“The pace of electrification – it’s not just on heat pumps; it’s on everything around our homes and in our workplaces – has really been pretty incredible over the past number of years.

“A lot of positives to that, also a lot of concerns associated with it.”

He says that’s only one factor. There is also population growth, underinvestment and lack of capacity, to name a few other causes.

Maritime Electric has also seen that surge.

“We’re seeing with electrification, that certainly there is increased use by our customers,” says Kim Griffin, the utility’s director of sustainability and corporate affairs.

The weekend saw a couple thousand homes and businesses without power, but similar to Summerside, no rolling outages were needed despite an all-time high in demand.

“We did reach a new system peak of 404MW,” Griffin says. “Our system was able to handle the capacity and the needs of our customers this weekend.”

That was part of a fragile weekend across the Maritimes.

Utilities all over shared power. That’s nothing new, but there’s more on the line when everyone is facing the cold.

“Over this last weekend, it was much more collaborative,” says Matt Drover, the senior director of energy for Nova Scotia Power. “There were some instances where there was more wind in Nova Scotia, which meant that we had more generation on the grid where we were actually giving energy to Newfoundland.

“Most days they’re giving energy to us.”

In New Brunswick, there was also elevated demand, but not all-time peak levels, says Jonathan Pollock, the system operator.

Still, there are challenges when all utilities face similar.

“We all peak at the same time and it’s becoming extremely problematic regarding sharing resources,” Pollock says.

He says if temperatures were a couple degrees colder with less wind, “it could have been more problematic.”

“NB Power continues to do a lot of work assessing load and demand and where it’s heading in the future. I want to emphasize it’s extremely important for us, as the Maritimes, to continue collaborating.”

The province is also feeling the pinch with increased demand.

“Even though we did not have issues this weekend, it is very, very problematic with the electrification and the growing load.”