The short power interruptions affecting some residents in an area ranging from Bridge Lake to Eagan Lake late last year seem to have disappeared.
Bridge Lake resident Lorraine Faessler and Eagan Lake Resort owner Kris Verheul both report the problems they previously experienced have gone away.
BC Hydro community relations manager Bob Gammer says that while the utilities company didn’t confirm a cause of the power glitches, it believes it was mainly due to extreme winter conditions.
“We think that it was weather related ... that snow and ice loading on the line, associated with wind, caused these intermittent outages.”
He explains repair crews removed the voltage regulator from the line for testing, but the results showed it was working.
When trees contact the lines, they are pretty obvious, and if they fall off afterwards, they leave burn marks on the wires, Gammer says, adding that since the power technicians couldn’t find any evidence of that, BC Hydro felt is wasn’t a tree-contact issue.
“Exactly what it was that may have been causing it earlier in the summer when the weather was better [is] difficult to determine.”
If extreme weather conditions happen again, he says the problem could come back.
“If it does reoccur, we would like to hear from customers and we’ll keep looking into it. But, [residents] do need to realize it may simply be weather related.”
Weather related or not, Faessler says it was the first time in her 65 years living there that this has happened, where she and other area residents had experienced the power blinking off and on several times almost every day for two months.
