If you live or work in or around downtown Sudbury, you might have noticed a spike in the number of short power outages this summer.
The reason is pretty simple, Greater Sudbury Utilities said today. Large mature trees and a high population of black squirrels are to blame.
The affected streets include Elizabeth, John, Riverside, Worthington, O’Connor, Stanyon, Wembley, Marion, as well as parts of Elgin and Shaughnessy near the train tracks. This fairly large area is serviced by Greater Sudbury Hydro feeder line 19F8.
“Most of the outages have been momentary, just a couple of seconds while our equipment resets, but that’s enough to shut off computers, appliances, clocks … and it’s frustrating for customers,” said Wendy Watson, the utility’s director of communications.
“Many of these outages have been caused by squirrels interfering with equipment. We know it’s a squirrel when we find the carcass below the fault site. In the past month, we’ve found over 15 electrocuted squirrels, though we’ve also found crows, raccoons, and other wildlife.”
Watson said the GSU also believes tree branches are touching lines intermittently in some places, triggering a momentary outage. The utility is speeding up its tree-trimming schedule as a result.
A tree-trimming contractor in the area over the next week to clean up the branches that are encroaching on lines.
“We have a four-year cycle for vegetation control … meaning over the course of four years, our entire system gets trimmed where needed,” said Watson. “We usually do the trimming in the fall after leaves have fallen, but in this case, we’ve moved things up to try to minimize the problems we’re having.”
Greater Sudbury Hydro said to protect their electronics, customers can purchase an Uninterruptible Power Supply for computers or other sensitive electronic equipment.
