Saint John Energy says recent outages are due to NB Power transmission line

String of Saint John power outages Saint John residents may have noticed a string of power outages and bumps throughout August, stumping utility providers.

Since Aug. 7, Saint John Energy has dealt with four power outages affecting over 1500 customers in Saint John, N.B., all along the same NB Power transmission line leading into the city.

“This year we have experienced about four interruptions on that line,” Saint John Energy executive director of operations Ryan Shonaman said.

“Two (interruptions) would have been loss of supply event where the power would have went out for a little bit, while the other two were more of a flicker… it wouldn’t have been more than a second.”

Shonaman said the root of the problems are all along a single transmission line.

“Our teams are working with their teams,” Shonaman said of NB Power. “We are in constant communication with them, so they are working on a resolution to the problem.”

Saint John Mayor Donna Reardon notes how rare it is for Saint Johnners to lose power in the first place, especially uptown.

“We never ever lose power so to lose power twice, even though one of them was only about two or three seconds is unheard of,” Reardon said. “So it's concerning obviously with Saint John Energy as well and they would like to get to the bottom of it so they will work with their partners at NB Power to get to the bottom of it.”

When these outages have occurred, all of them have taken no more than a few hours to restore power, but Shonaman doesn’t want to see these issues continue.

“We’ve got one of the highest reliability stats in Canada and we certainly value that and work very hard everyday to maintain that. So when outages do happen, people do not like it.So we are working very day to make sure we keep the power on.”

NB Power had not responded to a request for comment by time of publication.

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