In a span of just under five hours, the deep southeast corner of the province was hit with rolling power outages. Communities like Estevan, Oxbow, Bienfait, Roche Percee and even stretching to North Portal were affected, with crews being dispatched to solve the issue. SaskPower blames the outage on poor weather and ice building up on power lines, which made them unstable.
"It was certainly a condition that was seen across many parts of southern Saskatchewan. With the temperatures hovering around that freezing mark and with the precipitation that was coming down, it was sticking to the lines. And then, with the added factor of the wind coming in there -- that's called line galloping. So, when the wind picks up, it makes the lines sway or go up and down, which typically can result in the damage of the cross arms of the poles that the other lines are sitting on," explained Scott McGregor, spokesperson for SaskPower.
Outages were first reported around 2:15 pm on Friday, which affected Estevan, Bienfait and Roche Percee. The power was briefly brought back before another round of outages was felt around 2:30 pm. At that point, customers in the deep southeast corner of the province were without power. It didn't take long for the power to come back for residents in the Energy City and its surrounding communities, but rural areas had to wait until about 6:45 pm to see their lights come back.
"For the outage that impacted the city of Estevan, that was one of our transmission lines coming out of Boundary Dam as well as one of the transmission lines that services other parts of the southeast. Carnduff, Alida, Oxbow -- those were both caused by faults on transmission lines. Whereas, the outage that was impacting Stoughton, Carlyle, that region there, that did originate at one of our substations. But again, it was all weather-related."
According to McGregor, line galloping isn't new and is often exacerbated by weather, especially when weight from natural elements is at play. The transmission lines run warmer than the relative ambient temperature because of the current passing through. "Typically, whenever you see a buildup of ice or snow or frost on power lines, it's typically not actually that big of a problem. It's when you have that buildup and then the winds picking up, that's when you typically see outages from that line gallop [and] from broken cross arms and structures."
A lot of the structures that SaskPower fixed during the outage, shared McGregor, were broken cross arms on power poles. He noted that if customers see downed or broken power lines, call 310-2220 right away.
"If you do come across a downed power line, it's really important to maintain a safe distance. There's no way of knowing if that line is still energized or not, so just stay back as safe as far as you can. We recommend at least 10 meters or 30 feet or so Make sure you're keeping everyone else away and give our outreach centre a call right away - or even 911 at that point."
"Whenever you have that buildup of precipitation on power lines and an increase in winds, downed lines are a possibility. So it's really important that everyone remains very vigilant and safe whenever they come across one of these power lines," McGregor added, further emphasizing the danger down power lines can impose.
He thanked customers in the southeast who were affected by the outage for their patience as crews battled to bring power back to their homes. "We were out there as quickly as we could to get everything sorted out. But, you know, for some customers it was a bit longer than we would have liked. For all of those customers who did experience an outage, we thank you very much for your patience while we got those those outages restored."
To track outages in your area, you can check out SaskPower's Outage tracker page.