A recent string of power outages in the Golden are not related the transformer failure that resulted in December’s 36-hour power outage, according to Sally MacDonald, a spokesperson for BC Hydro.
All planned repair work to the Golden substation was completed in late winter this year, with repairs on one transformers reaching completion. Repairs had started prior to the December outage.
It was the second transformer that went down causing the outage in December, which was repaired during the outage. The substation is now working at full capacity, according to BC Hydro.
Three outages on Monday, July 11 from 8-10:30p.m., Wednesday, July 13 from 6:40 p.m. -7:20 p.m. and Saturday, July 16 from 9:25 p.m. -9:40 p.m. affected the same ~290 customers east of Kicking Horse Drive on the northern end of town, according to BC Hydro.
For these three outages, BC Hydro crews patrolled and found nothing wrong with the lines and we were able to restore power.
“Whenever a line trips, we need to fully explore the line to make sure there’s nothing wrong, for example a tree on the line.” explained MacDonald in an email.
“If we restore power without patrolling and there is a tree or branch on the line, there may be sparks on the trees which could be a safety/fire risk.”
A fourth outage in this area occurred on Thursday, July 21 from 4:30 p.m. – 6 p.m., affecting the same customers.
This time, BC Hydro was able to locate the problem that cause this series of outages. A faulty piece of customer equipment was identified as impacting the line.
The customer has said they would fix the equipment and BC Hydro does not anticipate any further outages in this area due to this issue.
Another outage on Tuesday, July 19 from 8:51-9:30pm was caused at the Golden Substation, when a crow flew into the equipment. This outage affected approximately 1,100 customers in Golden.
BC Hydro collects reliability data annually, which can be used to compare outages from 2021 and 2020.
The average duration of outages in Golden increased from 2.81 in 2020, to 3.31 in 2021.
However, the average number of outages in Golden decreased from 6.26 in 2020 to 3.41 in 2021.
Stats for 2022 will be available at the end of the fiscal year.
