The obstacles ahead

The process of getting customers’ power up and running involves decisions wherein the biggest lines are repaired first, in order to repair secondary lines, all eventually leading to the street where you live. Most utilities keep quantities of spare poles and cables and even transformers. All these are at the ready for a situation when they are needed.

Increasingly, though, there are more and more obstacles to getting the power back on quickly. Lineworkers are critical to the front lines of disaster recovery, but there is a labour shortage that will need to be addressed in the coming years.

The supply chain crisis facing our economy also has an impact. To mitigate long lead times, and to ensure that they have spare poles, and cables and transformers, utilities must place orders far in advance. Indeed, utilities with stockpiles of wooden poles preserved in pentachlorophenol are being forced to be discontinued as of October 2023, rather than phasing out their use as stocks deplete. The current supply chain situation is now affecting electricity companies, which will eventually impact resiliency down the road — and our ability to build the grid as we move toward a net-zero economy.