Feature Article August 5, 2004
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Hydro One to try againby Jule Koch Brison
Last winter, residents in the northern part of Addington Highlands experienced many hours of hydro outages, which caused much hardship. Some of the problems stemmed from Hydro Ones attempts to install a generator at the Mazinaw Distribution Station (DS) so it could service the X1P, the 230,000 volt line which provides power to the Mazinaw Distribution Station (DS). At a heated meeting in December last year, residents expressed their frustration to Hydro One officials, not only about the hardships of being without power in the winter, but also with the companys failure to communicate with the public about outages.
A second attempt to service the X1P has been scheduled for mid-September this year, but this time, Economic Development Committee Chair Bill Brown organized a meeting with Hydro One to let the public know what will happen, before it happens.
At the Council meeting in Denbigh on Aug. 3, Hydro Ones Dan Robinson, First Line Manager, Bancroft Lines, gave a presentation to council on the plan for accomplishing their goal without the disruptions of last year.
As before, a generator will be installed at Mazinaw DS, and power will also be routed through Northbrook DS. In addition, Hydro One has been preparing for the interruption by collecting extensive data, and Robinson said that they went literally to every pole to ensure that the information given to the engineers is accurate. Also, there are numerous feeder lines out of a DS, and the F3 feeder at Northbrook DS will help the F2 feeder. Power will also come from Ardoch DS to help Northbrook.
Councillors questioned Robinson on whether the plan would work, and he replied, It has to. Its like changing the motor oil in your car. If the line goes down without regular maintenance, well be in big trouble.
Robinson said the driver for the X1P interruption is Ontario Power Generation (OPG), and he reassured council that if OPG is not on target and the work is not done by Thanksgiving weekend, he would personally fight against it being done at all this year.
The interruption should last one week beginning around September 20, and Robinson said Hydro One will keep councillors informed and make sure the public is well aware of interruptions that may take place..
