Keeping the grid up on Cortes Island

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Trying to keep the grid up has been very challenging these past three weeks. BC Hydro crews were constantly on call throughout the region, for more than two weeks, repairing power outages caused by falling trees and snow encrusted power lines. Subzero temperatures meant skyrocketing heating bills. When John Sprungman recently asked why his lights were flickering, a BC Hydro repair technician informed him that Cortes Island is trying to draw more power than the infrastructure on Cortes can handle. BC set a new record for peak electricity demand between 5 and 6 PM on December 27th, 2021: 10,902 megawatts.

“Whenever we're responding to troubling snow, it tends to be a bit of a slower response. The roads are not easy to travel on. Things it takes longer to get to the location that we're traveling and it's often a prolonged event. Our crews really started on Christmas Eve on the 24th and it wasn't until Sunday that the Campbell river district crews had all that trouble cleared up, with the re-energized station of past systems in Zeballos,” said Karla Lowers, from BC Hydro Media Relations. “The good news is we can handle it.”

“Our system is not at capacity from a trust perspective. We actually have electric despair, and anticipate that will be a situation for the next number of years. So we can meet that demand and locally as well, the theatre that provides electrical service to Cortes Island isn't at capacity. So it does allow us to meet the demands that are put on the system in that, which are peak period.”

She explained that Cortes Island obtains its electricity from an undersea cable that crosses over to Sarah Point on the Malaspina Peninsula. From there the lines run about 35 kilometres to a substation in Powell River.

Most of the times that Cortes’ electricity comes back on during the night, the problem was in that Mainland segment of the line. A crew from Powell River made the repair.

The Campbell River office responds to the outages on Cortes Island. Crews generally arrive in the morning. They sometimes use the ferry, but when the weather makes this impossible have used planes, helicopters or a crew boat. BC Hydro has a facility on Cortes island that houses two vehicles, a small bucket truck, as well as an SUV and some equipment.

“Recently we did overnight in Cortez so that we could make the most of the crew's time that we are there,” said Lowers.

Crews are limited to work a 16 hour shift, after which they need to have eight hours of break time.

“We've stayed at lots of different places on Cortez island: motels, bed and breakfasts. One of the things that crews really liked to have is a warm bed to lay their head down on. Sometimes that's problem. When the power's out on the entire islands, we would like it for acquire a place that had an alternate energy supply, a generator or an alternate heat source. In regards to food, the cruise like to head off on their day with a warm breakfast. So sometimes we're really limited in regards to our ability to stay on the island because some of those resources aren't available,” said Louwers.

She asked that anyone who can help provide food or housing to crews email her at [email protected]

“I can put them in contact with the Campbell river line manager so that we make those connections to make it easier for our crews to stay over on Cortes when they need to.”