Summerside still operating near maximum power capacity, city says

The City of Summerside says power stability in P.E.I,'s second-largest municipality has improved, but residents and businesses should continue to preserve energy during peak times.

Maritime Electric is still working on repairs to its damaged substation in Sherbrooke, P.E.I., so power instability continues to be an issue, said J.P. Desrosiers, deputy chief administrative officer with the City of Summerside.  

"The availability of power from Maritime Electric continues to be volatile while they continue to work on the substation in Sherbrooke," Desrosiers said Thursday. "Ongoing co-operation with Maritime Electric and them providing us with what power is available will help us see what we hope is an improvement over the next couple of days." 

Favourable weather conditions, efficient operation of Summerside's solar and wind farms, and the use of battery storage improved the situation on Thursday, the municipality said in a news release. 

But even with those improvements, the city's energy grid is operating at maximum capacity, the release said. 

Maritime Electric announced Thursday night that it's planning an outage Friday morning at 5:30 a.m. for approximately 40 minutes to allow the utility to modify its transmission system to be able to support both Maritime Electric and Summerside Electric Utility's load requirements. 

The affected areas include Borden-Carleton, Hampton, Crapaud, North Bedeque, Chelton, Augustine Cove, Cape Traverse, Fernwood, Victoria, Lower Freetown, Kinkora and surrounding areas. 

The Cavendish Farms plant in New Annan — which gets its power from Maritime Electric — shut down five of its six processing lines Thursday morning to take load off Summerside's electric grid, said Bill Meisner, the senior vice president, strategic projects at Cavendish Farms.

"This is home for us, too. Cavendish Farms started here," Meisner said. "We're very concerned that one, our employees are looked after, and two, that our neighbours are looked after."

Shutting down processing lines was the right thing to do to support the people of Summerside, Meisner said. But he said it's not sustainable to operate a business under such power constraints.

"Every time we have to shut our site down, it reduces our inventory and puts a little more risk in place," he said. "Is it a long-term sustainable situation? No. I don't think anybody thinks that it is. We need power that we can depend on in order to run our sites effectively."

While Summerside reduced its services to only essential ones in recent days, it's starting to bring non-essential services back, Desrosiers said. 

"At the end of the day, we have to allow our residents to try and get back to life as normal," he said. 

The potential for rolling blackouts in the days ahead can't be ruled out, but "things look a little more positive," Desrosiers said.