REGINA – With more and more people moving to the province, the demand for gas and electricity has been increasing, which puts a strain on our aging infrastructure.
Last weekend, both SaskEnergy and SaskPower set records for one-day consumption use. While most of us have the option of staying indoors, what if we lost the ability to heat our homes?
“We feel that probably every winter from now on we’ll probably be setting a usage record,” said Dave Burdeniuk with SaskEnergy.
According to SaskEnergy, this year’s winter has been three per cent colder than 2013-14, when we managed to use nearly all of the natural gas in storage.
“By the end of last winter, by the time you got into the end of March, early April, those caverns were pretty well drained,” said Burdeniuk. “We do have contingencies in place to say, ‘Okay, what happens in this emergency situation?’ ”
Topping the list of back-up plans is curtailing gas to industrial customers on interruptible service contracts, which was the case for a few businesses last year. Burdeniuk said homes, schools, hospitals and seniors facilities are top priorities for service.
Half of the natural gas supplied to SaskEnergy customers comes from the storage caverns, while the other half comes from pipelines. A new $80-million, Bayhurst-to-Rosetown pipeline is meant to help relieve some of the challenges around demand in central Saskatchewan.
When it comes to electricity, outages continue to be a major concern with older infrastructure, which is blamed for 40 per cent of blackouts.
- Canadian man dies during Texas Ironman event. His widow wants answers as to why
- ‘Shock and disbelief’ after Manitoba school trustee’s Indigenous comments
- Canadian food banks are on the brink: ‘This is not a sustainable situation’
- Invasive strep: ‘Don’t wait’ to seek care, N.S. woman warns on long road to recovery
“We have some aging equipment and things that need upgrades and replacements. Sometimes, they can give out before we can get to doing that replacement,” said Tyler Hopson, a SaskPower spokesperson.
On Tuesday, residents in Regina’s Normanview neighbourhood were without power for about three hours.
“Typically we do find a way to get through that and bring back the power within a reasonable time frame, but we would always encourage customers to be prepared for emergency situations,” said Hopson. “We’ve been fairly lucky, over the last several years, in the winter months anyways, that outages have been manageable.”
SaskPower is spending $1 billion per year on infrastructure, but most of that money is going to building new lines.
“A lot of the focus is on new infrastructure right now because we’re adding so many customers to the grid,” said Hopson.
SaskPower added 7,800 new customers in 2014 while SaskEnergy added 7,300.
Comments