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.

'More could have been done'

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.

"What we found was trees that were outside the right-of-way that we occupy — sometimes 20, 30, 40 feet away, trees that we would never, ever have entertained cutting in the past — these were coming down on our lines," Roberts said.

He said the company has had limited success getting customers to let Maritime Electric cut down trees on private property. The company is in the process of trying to expand its right-of-way, to be able to access more trees without requiring landowner permission.

Utility spending less than other provinces

At a rate application hearing last month, commissioners with IRAC took Maritime Electric to task for underspending on vegetation management.

In 2020, Maritime Electric spent half as much per kilometre of distribution line on tree trimming compared to NB Power and a quarter as much as Nova Scotia Power.

The company has said it was spending at a level to put it on a 35-year cycle of trimming trees along distribution lines, compared to cycles of five to eight years in the other Maritime provinces.

Maritime Electric has put forward a plan to gradually increase its spending on vegetation management, to put the company on a seven- to 10-year cycle by the year 2027.

But even the company's VP of corporate planning and energy supply Enrique Riveroll said at the hearing that probably would not be enough, given the increasing risks from climate change.

"The projections are showing that ambient temperature is increasing into the future, as well as rainfall is increasing, so I expect we will have to increase our budget further post-2027," Riveroll said.

The company has explained it is trying to balance increasing spending on tree-trimming with minimizing rate increases for customers.

A deal was struck in April between Maritime Electric and the P.E.I. government to allow the company to increase its government-regulated profit margin through cost savings, as long as those savings don't come from reducing spending on vegetation management.

IRAC has ordered Maritime Electric to provide a report by Dec. 1 outlining risks to the reliability of its grid, together with its short- and long-term plans for vegetation management.

Langlois-Bertrand said he thinks the company is moving too slowly, prolonging risks of extended outages for customers.

He said while climate change is making it harder for utilities to maintain reliability, it's more important than ever to make every effort to do just that, given increased reliability on electricity for things like transportation and heating.

"Think about the fact that Fiona happened in the fall. So if it happens at the end of January, things are quite a bit different for most people out of power for more than a week," Langlois-Bertrand said.

He suggested P.E.I. should update the mandate utilities are given under the Electric Power Act to provide more accountability for companies when it comes to keeping pace with the effects of climate change.

Currently, the law requires utilities provide "safe and adequate service and facilities for services as changing conditions require."

"I don't think the definition was imagined to mean very rapidly changing weather patterns," said Langlois-Bertrand. "So that's one thing to settle as quickly as possible, [so] that everyone agrees on what's at stake here."

Provincial review still to come

In March, the province issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a third-party after-action review of Fiona that will include some sort of review of Maritime Electric's response and preparedness. 

But the opposition Green Party, which pushed for a public inquiry into the storm response, worries the wording in the RFP is too vague to provide any accountability from the company.

"Had Maritime Electric followed industry standards, the clean-up after Dorian and Fiona would have been far quicker and cheaper," leader Peter Bevan-Baker said in an email to CBC News. 

"Maritime Electric experiences tree-related outages at a rate that is more than twice the industry average. This is not acceptable for Island electricity customers.

"We know power outages like we experienced during Fiona are immensely costly to Islanders and businesses. We also know severe weather events are happening with increasing frequency. It's disappointing that neither the vegetation management plan nor the province's review will deliver the best possible outcomes for Islanders."