Frequent power outages should be a thing of the past soon for residents in Alvinston, Warwick Township, Petrolia and especially Oil Springs.
Hydro One's expanded and renovated $35 million Wanstead Transformer Station is set to come online by the end of the month.
Local media were invited to tour the state-of-the-art facility on Thursday afternoon.
Hydro One's Jason Fitzsimmons
Chief Corporate Affairs and Customer Care Officer Jason Fitzsimmons said the new station will provide long-term power service reliability for the area.
"What we've got is a fully enclosed transformer station, so obviously a lot more protected from natural elements and things that can cause power outages," said Fitzsimmons. "Originally it was a single line. So thinking ahead about other demands that are on the system it is a dual line, or dual circuit out of here. What that enables us to do is if we have a failure on one line, we can switch over to the other line. So it enhances our reliability."
This past summer, Hydro One and Bluewater Power customers in the area experienced about 20 outages -- in the span of 90 days -- mostly due to critters interfering with the old infrastructure from the 1950s.
"We did make some interim improvements to try and abate that with the existing station right now, in terms of some physical barriers, but you can only control nature so much," said Fitzsimmons.
He said the new transformer station is built to last at least 40 years.
Fitzsimmons said crews are just doing final testing to make sure everything is working as planned before the station is fully energized.
.@HydroOne’s Colin Parr shows off the new state-of-the-art transformer station on Wanstead Rd. in Enniskillen. Should be up and running by months end. #SLont pic.twitter.com/TnxUx6W89c
— Melanie Irwin (@MIrwinCHOKNews) November 1, 2018
