Hydro One is aware of the local outages and they are committed to making more investments in our area. I spoke with them late Thursday night and got an explanation of the March17th outage and 18th flickers. Hydro One explained the investments are ongoing in order to make sure customers have a more reliable service.
March 17th the loss of power supply was due to equipment failure, a 300 amp switch barrel that failed. There was no reason why this happened but now it is switched to a 900 amp so an equipment failure at this location should not happen again. Two of the three recent failures happened at this location within the last 6 weeks.
The issues on the 18th occurred in Oxley that did not appear in the system but now an infrared scan is being done on the entire feeder to find the problems. One of the wires blew out and hit the other wire. The M5 from Kingsville is getting more fault indicators so in the future they will be able to trouble shout the issues better.
Customers who experience outages are encouraged to call 1-800-434-1235 for Hydro One Customers or 519-776-5291 for ELK customers. As a councillor I have little ability to fix hydro issues by myself, I need your help.
I also believe it is time again for Essex Council to write to Hydro One and let them know of our concerns. Below I have entered a Notice of Motion to be discussed at Council in the near future. I still have many unanswered questions about ELK Energy and their asset management plan and investment in infrastructure. I have asked several ELK energy Board members about the state of ELK energy’s system and I have not received and an answer. When I get one I will share it. Mayor Larry Snively, Deputy Mayor Richard Meloche, Councillors Joe Garon, Morely Bowman and Chris Vander Doelen are on the ELK Board- I believe a public statement from ELK providing reassurance is long overdue. Call the ELK Board members with your ELK power flicker concerns.
If you are not satisfied with the response from your utility company please call the Ontario Energy Board and lodge and official complaint.
I have asked the clerk to enter this motion on the next council meeting, April 5th to be potentially debated at the second meeting in April pending council supports discussing the motion.
That Essex Council send a letter to Hydro One to let them know of the concerns we have in our municipality of frequent power outages that are negatively impacting both our residential homes and businesses. We do understand that Hydro One is in the process of making improvements to the grid locally here but we also want to express our urgent concern and attention to this matter. Our community is expanding, residents and businesses alike want and deserve a transmission system has sufficient capacity to deliver a safe and reliable supply of electricity.
https://www.hydroone.com/power-outages-and-safety/mobile-apps
