An all-day power outage has been scheduled for nearly the entire North Island region later this month.
BC Hydro has scheduled upgrade work on Sunday, May 25 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., expected to affect all communities from Woss north, with the exception of the village of Port Alice.
"Port Alice will not be impacted as it will be served by generators so we can complete work related to the powerline conversion project," confirmed BC Hydro spokesperson Karla Louwers, who noted the all-day outage is necessary so BC Hydro crews can deal with an aging, end-of-life transmission structure in between Woss and the Keogh substation.
As for Port Alice, the powerline conversion project is something BC Hydro has been working on for awhile now so that it can convert the transmission line that currently serves Port Alice into a distribution line where the village will be directly served from the Keogh substation instead of the Jeune Landing substation.
Louwers noted BC Hydro will be sending crews out to various areas of the North Island in order to help minimize the impact to customers.
"We will be doing other work as well," she said, stating residents will likely see BC Hydro crews working on not just different components of the electrical system, but also completing vegetation management to ensure the lines stay clear in the future.
"We recognize that there's never a good time for an outage, and we want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding while we complete this work," Louwers added. "We have hosted these outages for several years now around this weekend, and the reason we do it is to maintain reliability to the North Island by targeting those structures that are end of life or nearing end of life."
