'Completely unacceptable': Stouffville community jolted by latest Hydro One outage

Stouffville Mayor Iain Lovatt would like to see timelines moved up on Hydro One work on York-Durham Line

Yorkregion.com
Feb. 22, 2023
Simon Martin

On the coldest night of the year in early February when it was -30 C, close to 9,000 homes in Stouffville lost power for several hours. On the surface it might not seem significant, but the outage comes after years of a faulty power grid in Stouffville causing numerous outages.

Mayor Iain Lovatt immediately voiced his displeasure with Hydro One publicly.

“You were in our chambers in August promising upgrades to our grid and sadly here we are again, but this time with -30 C temps. This is again, completely unacceptable,” Lovatt said in an Instagram post.

The power outage in question happened Feb. 3 around 8:30 p.m. According to Hydro One, it was caused by a sleeve failing on one of the local distribution lines. Power was restored to all customers by 2:30 a.m.

While Lovatt said he was satisfied with how Hydro One responded to the outage, he said the company has a perception problem in the community.

“There is a perception in our community that we are not taken seriously by Hydro One,” he said.

Frank Van Veen lives out in north end of Whitchurch-Stouffville and was lucky enough not to lose his power in the recent outage.

“They just haven’t done a good job at replacing the old hydro infrastructure,” Van Veen said. “We have seen too many outages.”

Hydro One is aware of the general unhappiness with its service in Stouffville. Last summer, the matter was addressed at a council meeting. Current Hydro One President and CEO David Lebeter told council and local businesses that the company is investing in Stouffville to improve the grid. A new line extension was built along Aurora Road as well as a new transformer installed at the Ringwood distribution station. Hydro One had noticed a severe downtick in outages over the last three years.

Since August, Hydro One has completed the upgraded distribution station on 10th Line and installed more several smart metres.

There is significant work planned for the future, including a new connection line along York-Durham Line in 2024 and line extension form the Brown Hill transmission station in 2025.

Lovatt would like to see the timelines on those project moved up. “In my mind that needs to happen now,” he said.

Stouffville businesses have been very outspoken about the power issues they have endured in recent years.

Todd Finlayson, who operates seven McDonald’s franchises, including two in Stouffville, said his Stouffville locations experience much higher frequency power outages than his locations in Markham in Richmond Hill, costing him around $1,000 dollars an hour.

Stouffville Chamber of Commerce Karen Wootton said businesses across town are fed up with power outages that cost them significant income. “Every hour that the power is off has cost them tens of thousands of dollars,” she said.

Ward 4 Coun. Rick Upton said the town is undergoing major residential and commercial expansion, and it needs a reliable grid moving forward. “It’s a necessity of life,” he said.

Lovatt said the investment in the power grid by Hydro One in recent years has certainly helped make the situation better, but outages like the one earlier this month pour gasoline on fire that is slowly going out. The town ends up receiving a lot of complaints and Lovatt has to remind residents that the town has little to no control over the power grid. According to Hydro One, not only has the frequency of outages dropped in recent years, but also the duration.

In 2020, the average duration of an outage was 9.2 hours; in 2021, 6.8 hours. That number dipped to one hour in 2022.

Other work done by Hydro One has included replacing aging poles and installing 13 new smart grid devices, with plans to install 13 more in attempts to isolate power outages quicker and reduce the amount of people who lose power.