Notre Dame de Grace

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

Hydro-Québec is launching the first part of its 2035 Action Plan, which aims to boost service quality by reducing outages by about a third within 10 years.

Job one is reducing outages caused by vegetation by about 30% within five years, which means trimming branches and felling trees as contacts between vegetation and power lines are the main cause of breakdowns on the network, Hydro Chief Operating and Infrastructure Officer Claudine Bouchard told reporters Wednesday.

The utility plans to nearly double expenditures to more than $45 billion over a decade and will spend $130 million this year alone on trimming and cutting, clearing 220,000 spans representing some 22,000 km of lines, and felling about 75,000 trees deemed a risk. That will require new collaboration between municipalities and customers to carry out more preventive work, including cutting down trees likely to cause breakdowns. (Outages represent significant costs for Hydro-Québec: From 2016 to 2021, the utility spent between $144 million and $202 million per year on corrective maintenance following outages, even though preventing failure is generally less expensive than corrective intervention during or after outages.)

The utility will also boost network resilience by inspecting 17,000 km of overhead lines, 200,000 poles and 10,000 civil engineering structures and strategic equipment. It will carry out 7,500 equipment maintenance interventions, replace more than 28,000 wooden posts and install more than 500 composite posts; add 12.5 km of covered wires and bury 7 km of lines in the Outaouais and North Shore.

The borough of Côte des Neiges—Notre Dame de Grace just unveiled a plan to plant 5,000 new trees over five years. The borough canopy was hard hit during recent storms, including last April’s ice storm and the area is plagued by power outages year-round. Despite Hydro-Québec operating outside the city’s direct control, Mayor Gracia Kasoki Katahwa is in regular contact with Hydro-Québec and NDG MNA Désirée McGraw, said a statement from her office, “effectively voicing the frustration and dismay felt by CDN-NDG regarding the all-too-recurrent power outages. We are pleased to see that Hydro-Québec is finally taking steps to reduce the number of outages.”

The borough is cautiously optimistic “subject to further evaluation,” that their planting activities are unlikely to significantly impact power supply because the city selected species from a roster pre-approved by Hydro-Quebec to ensure compatibility with their infrastructure. Hydro-Québec and the city have also established a collaborative forum to facilitate ongoing dialogue and cooperation.

The announcement comes 14 months after Quebec Auditor-General Guylaine Leclerc slammed the crown corporation in a stunning, unprecedented 51-page report over Hydro’s laggard service, maintenance and replacement of aging equipment, poor data and reducing frequency and duration of power outages. That report noted Hydro-Québec’s reliability declined markedly, with average outage time per powered customer increasing by 63% between 2012 and 2021, excluding outages due to major weather events. n