NANAIMO — More power outages across the province were seen than ever before in 2024, with major fall storms in coastal B.C. and Vancouver Island the biggest contributing factors.
BC Hydro’s Susie Rieder said last year they dealt with over 1.4 million weather-related power outages, mostly due to drought-stricken vegetation falling onto their infrastructure and damaging power lines.
“That’s the most in BC Hydro history. These outages were caused by inclement weather, winds, rains, and trees falling into our infrastructure. We experienced that drought last year and we have been for the past about three to five years to varying degrees.”
A bomb-cyclone event with winds over 170 kilometres per hour hit the B.C. coast on Nov. 19, causing thousands to lose power, with some in the dark for several days after as BC Hydro crews scrambled resources to the hardest hit areas.
Rieder said those storms were some of the largest B.C. has seen in a decade, and the event alone resulted in over a million customers losing power.
She said November and December 2024 were the busiest months in the publicly-owned company’s history of restoring power.
Climate change is also a big factor with prolonged drought on Vancouver Island weakening vegetation, making them susceptible to falling on power lines with the wind picks up, said Rieder.
“But the good news is despite the increased frequency of these storms and outages, our response time is actually improving. We’ve maintained a track record of restoring 90 per cent of customers within 24 hours after one of these storm events, and we are able to have about three-quarters restored in less than 12 hours.”
Rieder added those improved restoration times can be attributed to them tripling their budget for vegetation management near transmission and distribution lines year-round.
She said they always take a “lessons-learned” approach to every major power outage so they can constantly improve their responses.
“We are better able to strategically deploy our crews and dispatch crews during major events just to get those resources to where they’re needed most. Smart meter data, they do provide us with that real-time information to validate the size of an outage and then we’re able to know when all customers are resorted. That does help provide a more efficient response and faster restoration times.”
— with files from Bill Nation, 97.3 The Eagle.
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