Summerside electricity customers could see ‘roving’ power outages this winter, city says

As temperatures plunge and Islanders crank up the heat, the City of Summerside is preparing its power plans amid mounting pressure on P.E.I.’s electricity grid.

Those preparations come as Maritime Electric warns it may need to resort to rotating outages this winter to prevent provincewide blackouts — something Summerside's chief administrative officer said is also a possibility for the city's customers.

“We’re concerned, for certain,” JP Desrosiers, told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin.

“We’ve been tracking the loads for our municipality’s utility pretty closely over the last number of years and seeing a steady increase, and… loads we haven’t seen before."

P.E.I.’s power grid has long relied on two subsea cables that connect the Island to the mainland and electricity purchased from New Brunswick Power.

Summerside Electric, which is owned by the city, generates about 60 per cent of its electricity through renewable sources like solar and wind, but it still relies on Maritime Electric's transmission system for power that the smaller utility buys from New Brunswick.

With P.E.I.’s grid under increased pressure — which Maritime Electric attributes, in part, to the province’s growing population — Desrosiers said Summerside is preparing for situations where its power is curtailed. 

In those cases, he said, the city is “forced to utilize and pull different levers that we have for generation capacity.” 

One of those levers is diesel generation — but Desrosiers said that's a “last resort.”

“It’s not something that’s both fiscally responsible and certainly goes against our goal of being green as a community.”

Desrosiers said the early blast of cold weather the Island saw in December has pushed the city closer to using its diesel generation than staff had anticipated at this point in the season. This winter, city officials anticipate Summerside’s power will be strained to a point where the generators are used more often than they have in the past. 

“In addition to that, we are preparing for the potential for needing to curtail our own customers in sort of a roving practice,” Desrosiers said. 

That means planned, temporary power outages for customers on certain circuits within the city in an effort to prevent a total collapse of Summerside Electric's grid.

“We’re hopeful that we don’t get into that scenario, but it’s important for our team to prepare,” Desrosiers said, noting that roving outages are also an option of last resort.