Power outage affects 12,000 Oshawa customers

A wide-spread power outage had approximately 12,000 Oshawa customers without power.

The power outage, which occurred in the late evening of May 26, 2021, affected about 20 per cent of Oshawa Power’s (OPUC) customer base and lasted about an hour.

OPUC says it became apparent that the power interruption was the result of supply from Hydro One Networks being interrupted and affected a wider area than just Oshawa.

Power was out in areas spanning from Pickering, through Clarington, as far east as Peterborough, and to the north and south of Oshawa as well.

According to OPUC, the cause of the Hydro One supply outage was determined to be faulty equipment, causing a switch to close, interrupting power supply to their Thornton Transformer Station which supplies Oshawa Power.

“Crews worked quickly and safely to transfer load and re-route power through two of our other stations,” says OPUC.

Crews were able to restore power to all customers in 54 minutes. On-call crews were called in and ready to actively restore power in under 20 minutes.

Oshawa Power President and CEO Ivano Labricciosa says Hydro One scheduled maintenance combined with an unforeseen equipment failure outside of Oshawa Power territory knocked out the supply to the substations.

“Crews were dispatched and did a great job “switching” or rerouting power through other stations and transformers to restore as many customers as possible until Hydro One was able to fix equipment and restore power supply to the affected areas within the Oshawa Power grid,” he says.

“Our Emergency Preparedness team acted quickly to get the word out to customers and crews quickly responded with a contingency plan to quickly restore power. We thank our customers for their understanding and patience as we worked to safely restore power to everyone,” he adds.