Lakefront Utilities Inc. Experienced a power outage on July 27, 2020 which affected over 8,000 customers in the Town of Cobourg for approximately four hours.
Electricity to the Town of Cobourg is provided through two feeders (M4 and M2) from Hydro One’s station in Port Hope.
Approximately eighty percent of that supply flows through two 27 KV substations, located on Victoria Street and on Brook Road in Cobourg which are owned by Lakefront Utilities Inc.
On Thursday, July 23, there was an equipment failure on Lakefront Utilities Inc’s Victoria substation. To restore power, the load from the Victoria substation was transferred to the Brook substation while Lakefront engaged their engineering subcontractor for repairs.
At 12:40 p.m. on Monday, July 27, the Brook substation experienced an equipment failure. The substation tripped out because of high weather temperatures and the resulting increased demand on a substation that was already carrying the extra load from the Victoria substation.
After identifying and isolating the issue, an attempt to pick up the load at the Brook substation was made, however it tripped. This failure was due to the high volume of “cold load” pickup, as most heavy equipment including air conditioners and fridges were attempting to power up simultaneously.
Lakefront Utilities made a few subsequent attempts to restore power by energizing one of the two feeders at the Brook substation to balance and stabilize the load, but the equipment continued to trip.
At approximately 6 p.m., repairs were completed on the Victoria substation, reducing the strain on the Brook substation and allowing the load to be picked up by both substations. Lakefront staff and crews worked into the night to monitor the situation and ensure power supply was stabilized.
“Lakefront would like to take the opportunity to thank its customers for their patience, support and understanding during yesterday’s outage,” commented Dereck Paul, President of Lakefront Utilities Inc.
“We will apply the lessons learned from the outage to identify opportunities for continuous improvements.”
Notwithstanding this issue and the duration of this outage, Lakefront Utilities’ reliability statistics over the years show that the power is on in Cobourg 99.9% of the time due in large part to critical infrastructure investments made in recent years.
Lakefront Utilities is proud of its achievements as a locally owned utility and remains committed to providing reliable services that contribute to the comfort and safety of the community.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
