N.L. Hydro 'let down' province, should take blame for Dark NL: PUB
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro "let down" its customers during the provincewide January 2014 blackouts, the province's Public Utility Board says in a damning new report.
The board released its Phase 1 report on the saga Thursday, and said "multiple failures" from N.L. Hydro caused, contributed to or lengthened the weeklong blackouts that spanned the province.
The PUB alleges Hydro caused the failure of the Sunnyside transformers and the air-blast circuit breakers at Sunnyside and Western Avalon by failing to follow accepted maintenance practice.
"The board concludes that the widespread and extended supply disruptions in 2013, 2014, and 2015 were the result of multiple failures by Hydro across various aspects of its operations over the course of a number of years," the PUB wrote.
"Hydro failed to meet the standard of generally accepted sound public utility practice and failed to fulfil its obligation to provide an adequate and reliable supply of power to customers."
Crisis?
Sporadic and rolling blackouts spanned Newfoundland for seven days in January 2014, which eventually led to a political crisis for then-premier Kathy Dunderdale.
Up to 200,000 customers went without power at a time, and Dunderdale resigned a few weeks later from her office.
The PUB found there had been insufficient generation capacity on the island interconnected system, and suggested Hydro was to blame for improper upkeep at the Hardwoods combustion turbine, the Stephenville turbine, and the Holyrood Unit 3 generator.
The board also found Hydro didn't properly communicate with Newfoundland Power.
In a statement, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro said it is committed to implementing all of the PUB recommendations.
"Because of our commitment and work over the past two years, we have seen substantive reliability improvements for customers," wrote president Jim Haynes. "Hydro fully recognizes the impact and seriousness of the January 2014 outage events on the people of this province."
