Equipment failure and cold weather caused three power outages in The Town of Hawkesbury during the past week.

On Wednesday, February 1 at around 3 a.m., the electricity went out in 20 per cent of the town. According to Hydro Hawkesbury General Manager Michel Poulin, two leaks had developed in breakers used to protect a transformer at the transformer station located on Main Street at the western limit of town. Loose bolts on two copper pipes caused “O” rings to shrink, which led to a leak of SF-6, a gas which is used as an insulator in the breakers. When gas pressure drops, the breakers trip and cause a shutdown to protect the transformers.

Sproule Power Line (SPL) personnel, who do line maintenance work for Hydro Hawkesbury, joined technical experts who travelled from Trois- Rivières, Québec, to assess the situation. Power was restored at around 11:30 Wednesday morning. To temporarily stabilize the temperature and seals so power could be maintained, SPL crews installed a tent over the breaker, with heaters inside.

“SPL did a tremendous job at building that temporary tent,” Poulin said.

When power returned, Hydro Hawkesbury cautioned that there could be further outages, but the tent and heaters did their job until the morning of Saturday, February 4, when a scheduled outage was held to allow experts to determine where exactly the leaks were and make repairs. Poulin said extremely cold conditions were needed during the scheduled outage to determine what was causing the leaks, and the bitter cold on Saturday morning provided that.

“The conditions were similar to what caused the original outage,” he said.

During the Saturday morning outage, personnel were able to easily identify the leaks and make repairs. The temperature outside was -31 Celsius on Saturday morning. The outage began at 6:15 a.m. and the power was back on at 8:15 a.m.

Poulin said 10 to 12 SPL workers were on the job monitoring the situation since it began on Wednesday and they were working in temperatures as low as -47 Celsius with the wind chill.

Thursday outage

A separate power outage, unrelated to the gas leak situation at the Main Street West transformer station, occurred in the east end of Hawkesbury on Thursday night.

In addition to affecting Hydro Hawkesbury customers in the east end of town, 343 Hydro One customers in the area between County Road 17 and the Ottawa River, as far east as Golf Course Road were affected. Poulin said Hydro One informed him the outage was caused by a broken crossarm on one of its lines and breaker problems at the Longueuil Transformer Station near L’Orignal, which feeds electricity to the Town of Hawkesbury.

Town takes action

During the initial power outage on Wednesday morning, the Town of Hawkesbury took special action to assist citizens. Mayor Robert Lefebvre said Poulin informed him of the situation and then Fire Chief Normand Beauchamp contacted him and a meeting was convened at the fire station to discuss possible responses.

The town opened the Robert Hartley Sports Complex on a 24-hour basis so residents without electricity in their homes could come to the facility where a backup generator provided power. Residents were able to get warm, charge mobile phones and computers, and have a hot shower if necessary.

Due to the possibility of further outages, measures were taken to ensure public safety was maintained and vulnerable citizens were protected.

“Cold weather was coming,” commented Lefebvre.

The extreme cold weather on Friday, February 3 was a particular concern because it threatened to again cause an outage.

“We were afraid our system at the west end of town would shut down right away,” Lefebvre said.

The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) performed extra patrols and did wellness checks on some citizens during the power outages and cold weather.

“They did bring a few homeless people to the arena,” said Lefebvre.

Lefebvre said the Thursday night power outage caused some confusion for residents, because it was unrelated to the cause of the Wednesday power outage. However, because the sports complex was already open, the town was prepared to assist residents who needed a place to go.

One more minor outage

Late in the day on Monday, February 6, Hydro Hawkesbury announced one more scheduled, minor outage lasting anywhere from less than one minute up to 15 minutes will take place on Wednesday, February 8 anywhere between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. The purpose of this short outage is to perform switching procedures to set the distribution system back to the normal settings it was at before the first outage on February 1. The Main Street West transformer station operates on 115,000 volts of electricity, so an interruption is required to ensure the safety of the workers doing the switching operations. The temporary tent around the breakers will remain in place until Hydro Hawkesbury is sure they will function properly if there are future extreme cold temperatures this winter.