Oshawa, Ontario – As Oshawa Power crews wrap up restoration efforts in our city and travel to assist neighbouring utilities in bringing power back to families across the Durham Region and the rest of the province, we will continue to assess damages that occurred to our grid. By understanding the magnitude of the damage caused by Saturday’s storm, we can begin planning solutions to strengthen our grid against future inclement weather events.
We understand that as our climate changes and weather events increase in frequency, resiliency (strength of our system) and redundancy (backup systems) are keys to keeping the lights on across Oshawa and minimizing restoration times during outage events.
“With a strong emergency response plan and incredible crews who without hesitation worked around the clock, we were able to restore power quickly to Oshawa. We are incredibly proud of our crew, who now continue to assist neighbouring utilities. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the emergency service and municipal workers who helped keep Oshawa safe in the storm. Last but not least, we thank you, our customers, for your patience and encouragement as we dealt with numerous outages across the city.”
– Ivano Labricciosa, President & CEO
By the Numbers
9,000+
On Saturday afternoon, a little more than 9,000 Oshawa Power customers lost power to their homes or places of business — the most in a single outage event since December 2013’s ice storm. Within minutes, the Oshawa Power team began to assemble to plan for restoration efforts.
99%
Number of Oshawa Power customers who had power restored to their homes by Sunday evening.
85+ km/h
Wind speeds during the storm reached upwards of 85 kph as recorded at the Oshawa Executive Airport. The resiliency of the infrastructure put in place over careful planning of the last ten-twenty years lessened the impact and supported our restoration efforts.
8.1 kilometres
Length of overhead wires were replaced in the aftermath of the storm or approximately enough to stretch from Oshawa’s eastern border with Courtice to its western border with Whitby.
25 poles
Crews replaced 25 broken poles over the weekend.
Thousands of additional materials
Including insulator, sleeve, transformer, switch, arrestor, etc. repairs and replacements, our team used thousands of additional parts and materials in our restoration effort. Through careful inventory planning, Oshawa Power was prepared with all required materials.
For more information on how we are preparing our grid for the future and consistently working to minimize outages, visit our Capital Rebuild Plan and Tree Trimming web pages.
