City stats show Saskatoon performs well when it comes to power grid

The City of Saskatoon performs better on average than its national counterparts when it comes to power grid reliability and the duration of power outages, according to 2015 statistics.

Last year, electrical service was provided by Saskatoon Light and Power 99.98 per cent of the time, slightly better than the Canadian urban average of 99.97 per cent. The average duration for an outage over the last 10 years has been 63 minutes, compared to a national average of 90 minutes, according to officials.

“That shows that we’re able to respond quickly and try to get the power back on in Saskatoon,” said Trevor Bell, Saskatoon Light and Power’s director.

READ MORE: Power outage forces downtown Saskatoon businesses to close early

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The decade duration average was well surpassed Thursday, when downtown Saskatoon experienced a roughly four-hour long outage. It caused a number of businesses to close their doors, including Congress Beer House on 2nd Avenue.

“It’s too dangerous to even serve in the dark so we shut down for the afternoon,” said Vanessa Barrett, a server at the restaurant on Friday.

“A single event of a contractor digging into a line caused a huge outage for us,” said Bell about Thursdays outage.

Outside triggers are a common cause of power loss, according to Bell. The city’s statistics show that 173 outages occurred in 2015; 13 per cent were cause by foreign interference, which is what happened Thursday. Twenty per cent were caused by defective equipment, while 23 per cent were caused by trees contacting power lines.

“One of the things we can do to combat that is to go tree trimming and we do patrol our lines, especially our higher voltage lines,” said Bell.

The most common reason why the lights went out in 2015 was the city itself turning off the switch to do maintenance work. Scheduled outages accounted for 28 per cent of incidents.

“We use thermal cameras to look at our infrastructure, find out where there’s hot spots, we then try to repair them before that breaks,” said Bell.

Bell said he doesn’t see an upwards or downwards trend ahead for the city in terms of its ability to deter and deal with power outages.