Electricity Canada member projects

Torontonians love their urban trees. In many older Toronto neighbourhoods, the powerlines connecting each home to the grid are suspended above ground from utility poles on the street. During storms, tree branches often fall on these overhead wires, damaging the customer’s home and requiring lengthy repairs before the customer’s power is restored. In some cases, live wires can even be downed, and present a hazard to the community. Toronto Hydro has adopted special safe-breakaway overhead lines, so that when a tree branch falls on the line, it disconnects safely from the utility pole, saving the customer’s home, and keeping live wires away from people. When the repair crews arrive, the hydro crews can re-insert the line and get the customer’s power back on quickly.

Not every adaptation needs to be a piece of new equipment. In New Brunswick, periodic floods during hurricane season can wash out culverts and roads, at the same time that high winds can knock out customer’s power. Saint John Energy noticed that certain roads would seem to always be washed out, and repairs to the culverts could take days or weeks - during which the customers power remained off. Hardening the culvert, or building a large bridge was out of the question, so the utility got creative. Before the next storm made landfall, they drove their heavy truck across to the far side of the culvert with all of the repair equipment they expected to need. Then, when the storm washed out the culvert as they knew it would, the repair crews simply took a small dinghy across the stream once the storm had passed, got in the truck, and got customers’ power back on long before the culvert and road had been repaired. Sometimes, just doing things a little differently is better, faster and less expensive.

The dilemma for Canada’s electricity companies is this: the more we rely on electricity, the more reliable we will need electricity to be. At the same time, extreme weather like wind, ice storms, floods and heat waves will put pressure on the infrastructure that generates and delivers electricity to Canadians.

By 2030 – five years before the government’s stated goal of making Canada’s electrical grid net zero in 2035 – one in six people in the world will be reaching retirement age.