Island's power grid needed 'urgent' vegetation management, even before Fiona

Nearly three-quarters of Prince Edward Island's power lines were in urgent need of maintenance in late 2019 to protect them from nearby trees, according to documents Maritime Electric filed with the province's energy regulator.

Those same documents show only a fraction of the work necessary to secure those lines was carried out over the following three years, leaving the grid vulnerable when post-tropical storm Fiona struck in September 2022, taking out power to the whole province.

In a rate application Maritime Electric filed with the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission last June — three months before Fiona — the utility disclosed the results of a vegetation inspection conducted along its power lines in the aftermath of 2019's post-tropical storm Dorian.

That inspection showed 67,000 of Maritime Electric's transmission and distribution spans, representing 74 per cent of the company's overhead power lines, "require[d] urgent vegetation management to avoid a significant deterioration of reliability" in P.E.I.'s electrical grid.

A span represents the length of wire between two utility poles.

The company pegged the cost to address the issue at $54 million. While it increased its vegetation management budget in subsequent years, company records show just over $9 million had been spent by last September, when Fiona struck.

"More could have been done, for sure," said Simon Langlois-Bertrand, a researcher with the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal.

"Fiona was a very large storm, and any risk and reliability issues were compounded by its impact. But could it have been made better by a more rapid preventive maintenance [schedule]? Yes, of course."

This week, a spokesperson with Maritime Electric told CBC News via email that the company is gradually increasing its budget for vegetation management to be able to complete the needed work within a time frameof seven to 10 years, and that this time frame fits within what the company meant as "urgent" in its report to IRAC.

Fiona initially took out power to all of P.E.I., and accounted for more than 13 million hours of customer interruption, according to Maritime Electric's post-mortem on the storm.

The average outage time per customer was 157 hours, or almost a week. In total, crews had to clear more than 40,000 trees that came down on power lines and transformers.

"Fiona caused extensive tree failure, which was the fundamental cause of damage to the electrical system," the company wrote in its post-mortem.

"There is a risk that future storms of this magnitude will cause similar or even more damage. The company recognizes the need to significantly increase vegetation management activities to reduce this risk."

But in an interview with CBC News, utility CEO Jason Roberts said the problem had less to do with trees within the company's right-of-way — trees which could have been identified as a potential risk during the 2019 inspection — and more to do with trees coming down outside areas under the company's jurisdiction.