Author: Josh McCulloch

Are you thinking about purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) or making big home renovations that will require an electrical service upgrade?

Whether you are looking for an electrical service upgrade, to connect a new electrical service, or need a temporary service for your construction project, we’ve made the process simple.

While impacts of renovations or added electrical devices on a home or business’ power supply are an oft overlooked issue, it is something you would be well served to understand before completing a project or purchase.

Any new services, upgrades, or temporary supplies must first be approved by our engineering team to ensure everything will be safe, reliable, and to control for potential impacts on connected infrastructure. Before we get into the simple process for submitting your request, let’s look at what these requests are and when you would need to consider a new, upgraded, or temporary electrical service.

Submit a Service Request

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New Electrical Service

Applying for a new electrical service is necessary when a new electrical service is required for a property or location not currently connected to our grid. The most common examples include:

New Construction

When a new residential, commercial, or industrial build is complete, a new electrical connection must be established to provide power to the new building or complex.

Subdivisions and Developments

Builders or property developers constructing a new subdivision, multi-residential building, or complex, will need to apply for a new electrical service to ensure that all buildings and/or units are connected.

Agricultural Operations

Farms and other agricultural operations will often need additional electric connections when a new farm, greenhouse, storage facility or other building is added on their property.

Remote or Off-Grid Locations

In areas where our grid currently does not offer service, any customer requiring an electrical connection will be required to contact our team about extending service to the location and setting up a new electrical connection.

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Electrical Service Upgrade

Electrical service upgrades are an increasingly common request among our customers. As homes in our city continue to age, many homeowners are recognizing that their electrical service can no longer support their electrical needs.

While there are various reasons a customer may require an upgrade to a higher capacity electrical service, some of the most common reasons include:

Home Renovations and Additions

When homeowners plan to add additional rooms, split an existing home into multiple units, add new appliances, or otherwise plan to increase the electrical load in their home, an upgrade to their electrical service may be required to accommodate the additional demand.

Pool and/or Hot Tub Installations

The addition of a pool and/or hot tub to your backyard may require an upgrade to your electrical service. These systems often draw large amounts of electricity during operation that can create issues with your electrical service if it is not equipped to handle the load.

Heat Pump or Air Conditioner Installation

If you are looking at installing an air conditioning system in your home or are looking to switch away from gas heating to an electric heat pump, it is important to consider the capacity of your current service. These systems can drastically increase demand during peak use and may require an electrical service upgrade.

Electric Vehicle Charger Installation

Making the switch to an EV can be a great way to lower your carbon footprint and save on your personal transportation costs. However, if you plan on installing a Level-2 charger to charge your new EV at home, you will likely need to upgrade your electrical service.

Solar, Battery, or Generator Installation

Whether your goal is to save on electricity costs, lower your carbon footprint, or ensure you have a backup power supply, the installation of these devices can often cause issues with lower capacity services. Before moving forward with installation, it is best to determine if you will need an electrical service upgrade ahead of time.

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Temporary Service

A temporary service request is necessary when a customer needs electrical service for a short-term or temporary purpose. Some common situations in which a temporary service request would be required include:

Construction Sites

Contractors and builders will often require a temporary electrical service during the construction or renovation process in order to power their tools, equipment, and any necessary temporary structures.

Special Events

Event organizers hosting outdoor festivals, concerts, or fairs may require a temporary electrical service in order to power for event-related needs such as rides, vendors, stages, etc.

Building Additions

In certain situations, additions to an existing home or building may not be able to connect to the existing service and the owner or contractor responsible for the project may request a temporary service until a permanent connection can be established.

Emergency Situations

When disaster strikes temporary power supplies can be required to help power emergency services and other critical infrastructure in the aftermath.

Temporary Retail

Seasonal or pop-up retail outlets may need temporary electrical service to operate necessary cash registers, lighting, and heating and cooling systems.

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Our Simple Process

As always, any electrical work around your home must be completed by a licensed electrical contractor. Some people think DIY electrical work can help save money on a project, but the risk of harm and/or fire are never worth the reward and, in Ontario, hiring a licensed electrical contractor is the law.

The process for an electrical service upgrade, new connection, or temporary power supply can be broken down into these steps:

Application Submission

The first step in the process is to submit an online application to our team. It is important to note that our application requires both your information and the information of your chosen electrical contractor that will help you complete the work. Without your electrical contractor’s information, our team cannot process your application.

Assessment

Once you have submitted your application, our engineering team will reference the information provided and determine the specific requirements for your service request, including the required fees to complete the request.

Installation

Once your application has been approved and any required fees are approved, our team or your licensed electrical contractor can proceed with the necessary work required to complete your request.

Inspection

After completion, your project will undergo inspection to ensure all safety and regulatory requirements are met. Once the inspection is complete, it can be energized and ready to power your completed project!

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No matter the type of request, it is important that you work closely with our team and complete all necessary applications before incurring any costs associated with your project. Oshawa Power is committed to keeping our grid as safe and reliable as possible and through following proper processes, we can help make sure your project is completed safely and adheres to all local electrical safety standards.

Serving more than 61,000 customers across 145km², the Oshawa Power fleet plays an integral part in the work we do each and every day to maintain, repair, and ready our grid for the future. For our field staff, their vehicles are their office and their workshop. With the specialized tools and equipment on board that allow our powerline technicians, substation electricians, inspectors, and more, to complete the work necessary to keep the lights on, our fleet plays an integral part in all that we do.

With more than 30 vehicles from a light duty electric vehicle (EV) to our largest double bucket trucks, our vehicles are often our most important tool. Let’s take a closer look at the vehicles that make up the Oshawa Power fleet and how we use them in our day-to-day operations.

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Bucket Trucks

The most recognizable member of our fleet, no local distribution company (LDC) could survive without their bucket trucks. As the ‘workhorses’ of our fleet, our 7 bucket trucks allow us to safely complete the work necessary to keep power flowing to each and every customer across our city.

Our bucket trucks come in two distinct varieties; single bucket, 55-foot trucks and double bucket, 85-foot trucks. While these trucks have some key differences, the main features are the same. Both trucks feature hydraulic extension booms that allow our crews to safely work on overhead powerlines when completing scheduled maintenance and rebuilds or when responding to trouble calls and working to restore power when outages happen. Most day-to-day maintenance and trouble calls are taken care of using our 55-footers.

Outriggers, metal support posts attached to the trucks, provide stability for both trucks when crews are working overhead. These ‘feet’ help to level out our trucks and provide a stable base when our team members go up in the bucket.

Both trucks also feature hydraulic tool systems, providing our team with the necessary tools to maintain and make repairs to our grid. Storage compartments on the trucks are also used to store basic tools, replacement parts, and specialized equipment such as amp and volt meters.

For general safety, our trucks also feature flashing beacons and halogen spotlights. Beacons warn our community when our teams are hard at work, helping them avoid the area and potential electrical hazards, while spotlights allow our team the visibility necessary to work in all conditions, night or day, rain or snow, when we are called upon.

All of our bucket trucks now include portable defibrillators on board. While not a traditional safety requirement in the electricity distribution industry, all of our in-field workers are CPR-certified and able to operate a defibrillator, improving safety conditions for our staff and local community alike.

Our 85-foot, double bucket trucks are not often used in day-to-day operations but are an important asset when our team needs to work on higher voltage 44kV feeder lines. The higher boom length is necessary to reach these lines that are generally more elevated than more common lines around our city.

In addition to the higher boom, these trucks feature fully-insulated fiberglass buckets. This allows our crew to work ‘barehand’ on our 44kV lines.

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Digger Trucks

Another integral piece of equipment for our field team, digger trucks have a similar cab to our bucket trucks but differ greatly in their purpose. In place of storage and an extendable boom on the rear, digger trucks feature a large auger designed to drill into the earth for underground work and pole installations.

These trucks may also be used to transport large equipment to its final location, such as transformers.

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Station Vans

While you are less likely to see our station vans driving around Oshawa each day, these vehicles have a very important role to play in our fleet. These vehicles are primarily used by our substation electricians.

On board is all the equipment our substation electricians need to perform repairs and maintenance across Oshawa’s nine municipal substations.

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Light and Medium Duty

Making up the largest portion of our fleet are our light and medium duty vehicles. From small sedans to specially outfitted ‘dump truck’ pick ups, these vehicles are used for general transportation and lighter duty work.

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Tension Stringing Trailers

Have you ever wondered how the wires used to energize our city get from the spool to their final destination, high above our city streets? The answer is that this is a team effort between bucket trucks and specialized tension stringing trailers.

These trailers allow our team to quickly and safely string new powerlines, whether it is installing new infrastructure or performing maintenance on existing poles.

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At Oshawa Power, we know an LDC can only be as effective as the tools they use to build and maintain the local power grid. As the most important tools in our industry, we take pride in our fleet and ensure each of our vehicles are kept in ideal shape to allow our team to provide our city with one of the most reliable power grids in our province.

Now, when you see our team around the city you will better understand the importance of the vehicles we use to continue providing a safe and reliable supply of power to our city.

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Canada, the Great White North, land of the world’s finest maple syrup, home of the Rocky Mountains, with rich natural landscapes spanning from sea to shining sea, and a reputation as one of the kindest countries on Earth.

As Canadians, we have lots to be proud of including a long and impressive history of innovation and world-changing inventions. From insulin to peanut butter, generations of Canada’s most visionary thinkers have developed technologies that change the way we live at home and across the globe.

In honour of Canada’s biggest national holiday, we’re celebrating some of our nation’s most electric innovators. Join us on this journey of discovery and appreciation for Canadian innovations that use electricity to light up our lives, keep us connected, and get us where we need to be.

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Alexander Graham Bell

One of Canada’s most well-known inventors, Bell developed an important technology that billions across the globe use each and every day: the telephone.

Raised by his mother, an accomplished pianist despite her deafness, and his father, a professor studying the field of human speech, Bell developed a deeply personal interest in sound technology. From a young age, his curiosity led to a handful of useful inventions including an automatic corn husker at the age of 12.

In the early 1870s, Bell became transfixed by the idea that it could be possible to transmit human voice over wires using electricity. Working together with his partner Thomas Watson, the team developed a working solution in 1875 and raced to the patent office, narrowly beating out rival inventors Meucci and Gray.

Granted his patent for the telephone in March 1876, Bell officially made the first ever phone call, instructing his partner, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”

Bell’s other notable inventions include the metal detector, graphophone, and audiometer.

John Joseph Wright

Born in Yarmouth, England, Wright first arrived in Canada as a millwright in the early 1870s before he began pursuing electrical experiments and inventions. Wright first began working on the development of improved electrical generators in the late 1870s which eventually led to the installation of North America’s first electric-arc street lamp.

Wright would eventually open Toronto’s first commercial power station and began providing electric lighting to businesses in the city before changing focus to his most famous invention: the very first electric streetcar.

Commissioned by the Toronto Industrial Exhibition in 1883 to install a demonstration electric railway, Wright’s original design failed to accomplish the task. Trying again in 1884, Wright was able to motorize a Grand Truck flatcar, successfully developing the first electric streetcar. To this day, electric streetcars remain an important mode of transportation throughout Toronto and in cities across the world.

George Klein

A renowned Canadian inventor, born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1904, George Klein plied his trade as a mechanical engineer and designer for more than 40 years, contributing to countless innovations from wind tunnels, to space shuttles, and even nuclear reactors.

Despite his wide ranging contributions, Klein remained most proud of the “Klein Chair”, the world’s first mass-produced electric wheelchair. Klein’s invention was born in the aftermath of the Second World War and the revolutionary use of penicillin in modern medicine. As the use of penicillin became increasingly common in combating infection, the likelihood of surviving wartime spinal cord injuries had increased dramatically, leading to less fatalities but an increasing number of disabled war veterans.

Thanks to strong advocacy from Canadian veterans, including para- and quadriplegics who were dissatisfied with manual wheelchair solutions, Klein was commissioned to develop an alternative to help improve the quality of life for disabled veterans. By 1953, he had developed a working prototype and began mass-producing his chair. He would later grant patent-free rights to encourage production across North America and revolutionize mobility for disabled individuals across the world.

Henry Woodward & Mathew Evans

The inventors of one of the most revolutionary technologies in human history, Woodward and Evans are far from household names. In 1874, the pair were granted Canadian patent 3,738 for their invention – the electric light bulb.

Their design, considered at the time as fully effective and sufficiently promising for commercial development, is credited by many as the first example of an electric, incandescent light bulb in history. The bulb, consisting of a glass tube, two wires, and a carbon ‘filament’, was also patented in the United States. Despite its viability, the pair did not have sufficient resources to commercialize their invention and decided instead to sell their patents to an enterprising American inventor by the name of Thomas Edison.

Edison would go on to create an improved design based on the original Woodward & Evans bulb and the rest, as they say, is history…

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When you wake up on Canada Day and turn on your lights or start a pot of coffee, just like every other day you can be sure that the electricity that powers your life will be there. Electricity can often be taken for granted, but contributes so much to improving the quality of our lives.

This Canada Day, whether you call your friends to make plans or take a streetcar into the city to celebrate, we urge you to remember the innovative Canadians that put the wonders of electricity to use to develop these revolutionary inventions that have made a difference in the lives of billions of people all across the globe.

Outages come in a variety of shapes and sizes, here’s what you need to know about what causes power outages.

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As one of Ontario’s oldest operating electricity distributors, we know a thing or two about power outages. While the days of outages caused by insufficient water flow on Oshawa Creek are long in the past, outages remain an inevitable part of what we do, both for the better and for the worse.

Building a stronger, more reliable grid for our customers is at the core of everything that we do. Each year, millions of dollars are spent maintaining and upgrading our grid to ensure that when you flip the switch, your lights come on. In fact, in our recent history, we have posted reliability numbers eclipsing 99.99%, pushing the upper bounds of what’s possible.

Despite our strive for perfect reliability, a 100% reliability score remains near impossible. Due to the nature of electrical systems, the complex integrations of equipment, and their exposure to outside forces, outages are an inevitable occurrence. By sharing how we classify outages and the most common causes, we hope to help you better understand how our grid works and how our team is working towards building an industry-leading local power system.

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Power Outage Types

In simplest terms, outages can be easily categorized into three specific types; reactionary, proactive, and momentary outages.

Reactionary Outages

Reactionary outages are likely the type of outage you think of when power outages are brought up in conversation. These outages, sometimes referred to as ‘unplanned’ outages, occur when an unexpected fault occurs on our grid, causing loss of power to our customers for an extended period of time.

Reactionary outages are clearly the most disruptive and impactful outages for our customers, as our team often must work to determine the issue, respond to the affected area, and complete necessary repairs before full restoration can be achieved. While this process can be lengthy depending on the extent of the issue, in 2022 our team averaged a response time of just 14 minutes. You can rest assured knowing that when outages happen, our team is ready to act.

While these outages are unpredictable in nature, we can, and do, act with foresight to ready our team when risk is elevated due to external factors like weather conditions.

Proactive Outages

A lesser known but equally important type of outage are proactive or ‘planned’ outages. These outages are important for numerous reasons – most notably allowing for our teams to safely complete maintenance and upgrades to our local power grid.

While these outages may still cause inconvenient disruptions to your day, we carefully plan these events to be as infrequent and non-disruptive as possible.

Our team ensures ample notice is given to homes and businesses in affected areas in case alternative arrangements must be made to limit impact on our customers.

Momentary Outages

The most misunderstood of all outage types, momentary outages or ‘blips’ as we often see them referred to by customers, can certainly be an inconvenience. Despite the inconvenience, these outages are actually a sign that our grid is working as intended.

We are proud to be one of the first local utilities to rollout a Fault Location Isolation and Service Restoration (FLISR) system that is integrated with our local power grid to almost instantly detect outages and restore service to as many customers as possible, as soon as possible. This isolates an outage to only the area directly affected by the issue, while customers that would have also experienced an extended outage in the past are restored within seconds.

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Power Outage Causes

Power grids of all sizes can be affected by a number of unique issues that cause interruptions to the delivery of electricity. At Oshawa Power we use ten distinct power outage causes, as set out by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), to classify service interruptions.

Adverse Weather

Typically the most common of power outage causes, Adverse Weather likely doesn’t need much explaining. Power distribution equipment is often exposed to the elements and heavy rain, snow, sleet, or wind can cause damage to our grid, interrupting service to our customers.

Snow often carries the most risk due to the weight of accumulation on power lines, transformers, and other equipment. Wind can also be particularly damaging as it can cause wires, and sometimes poles to break.

Defective Equipment

Another leading cause of power outages, Defective Equipment is a classification that encapsulates a variety of issues relating back to our physical infrastructure. Generally, there are three common causes of Defective Equipment outages; a factory defect on new equipment, random failure, or failure of equipment near end of useful life.

Our Capital Rebuild Plan is developed based on data-backed Asset Condition Assessments that help us prevent equipment from reaching end of life and avoid outages caused by aging, defective equipment.

Foreign Interference

The most misunderstood of power outage causes, Foreign Interference is far less menacing than it sounds.

Foreign Interference is the general term for physical interference with our lines, transformers, and other equipment from outside sources. Usually this interference is caused by local wildlife such as raccoons or squirrels, but can include motor vehicle accidents, aerial contact, or sometimes even a giant source of national pride.

We have proactively implemented a Critter Guard installation program at all transformer stations and on all new transformer installations to mitigate the risk of these outages.

Tree Contact

Another potential source of interference with our grid is local vegetation. Due to the usual proximity of our infrastructure to vegetation, limbs may come into contact with our wires or other equipment causing outages.

We have developed an ongoing Tree Trimming and vegetation mapping program to pinpoint potential areas of concern and prune these problem areas to help avoid these outages.

Lightning

Outages caused by Lightning generally go hand-in-hand with Adverse Weather. Electrical systems can be drastically affected when infrastructure is struck by Lightning.

Scheduled Outage

Necessary for maintaining and improving our local power grid, Scheduled Outages must occur when our crews are completing work on our grid for their safety and the safety of our local community.

To minimize the impact of Scheduled Outages on your daily life, we will always communicate upcoming planned outages via the delivery of a Planned Outage Notice to all service addresses that will be impacted.

Loss of Supply

In Ontario, each Local Distribution Company (LDC) is connected to the larger provincial grid where electricity generated at hydroelectric, nuclear, and other generation facilities is distributed across high-voltage lines to transformer stations where it is ‘stepped down’ and delivered to the end user. When an issue occurs along these high-voltage lines or at a transformer station preventing electricity from reaching an LDC’s grid, the result is a Loss of Supply outage. These are quite rare but can be among the most impactful power outage causes.

Adverse Environment

Outages caused by Adverse Environment are another rarity. These outages occur when our distribution equipment is subjected to abnormal factors such as salt spray, industrial contamination, corrosion, or fire, among other potential issues.

Human Element

An exceedingly rare cause of power outages in Oshawa and across the province, there is still some human element involved in certain steps of the electricity distribution process. When human action causes an issue with the delivery of electricity, it is classified as a Human Element outage. We experienced no outages caused by Human Element in 2022.

Other/Unclassified

The last outage type is the most vague. In rare cases when a direct cause cannot be reliably determined, the outage will remain Unclassified.

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We hope that this information has helped you to better understand the types and causes of power outages, some of the challenges our team faces in delivering safe and reliable electricity to your home or business, and the strategies we have in place to minimize downtime and mitigate outage risk.

We encourage you to continue to report outages when they happen via our online Outage Centre and let us know about your experience. Even with our industry-leading FLISR system detecting outages instantly, your reports can help us pinpoint exact locations where issues or interference may be present, leading to a quicker response and shorter service interruption.

While no power outages would be an ideal outcome for our customers, unfortunately that goal remains unattainable. Despite the near impossibility of 100% reliability, our team continues to strive towards the best possible reliability we can provide, aiming to reach ‘four nines’ or greater than 99.99% reliability each and every year.