Frequent power failures in south Regina frustrating residents

Some residents in south Regina say they have been plagued by power outages over the past few months. Outages have been reported about a dozen times and it’s causing problems for those who rely on home computers and other electronics.

Hillsdale, Whitmore Park and Albert Park appear to be the hardest-hit neighbourhoods, with about a dozen power outages in recent months. It prompted a meeting between residents and SaskPower officials. Coun. Cheryl Stadnichuk helped bring the parties together.

“Yeah, in my neighbourhood of Hillsdale it’s been quite extreme, regular, chronic power outages and outages that would go on for hours, so it’s been tough [for] people working at home, people are losing technology,” Hillsdale resident Rae Staseson said.

“In September I received a number of phone calls and emails from residents who are concerned about frequent power outages. In September there was one that lasted, a woman that had called me, five hours and her husband is on oxygen so she was very concerned about not only the frequency of the outages but the length of them,” Coun. Stadnichuk said.

SaskPower sent crews searching for the cause of the repeated failures. They think they found the problem.

NDP MLA Aleana Young represents some of the affected neighbourhoods.

“But the biggest challenge was new processes at substations that SaskPower is using and some new technology that was in place that started to fail and took about a summer to figure out where and why,” Young said.

SaskPower believes it has the problem solved. There has been only one outage since winter weather arrived, a season when reliable electricity is crucial to keeping homes warm.