To improve its services, Hydro-Québec has set a goal of reducing the number of outages by a meager 1% next year.
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Claudine Bouchard, executive vice-president and head of infrastructure operations at Hydro-Québec, confirmed this on Tuesday during a press conference held by the state-owned company, which discussed the measures the state-owned company plans to take to improve its performance.
The lack of reliability of the Hydro-Québec network has been criticized several times in recent years. In 2022, customers spent an average of 14 hours without power, and in 2021 it was almost 6 hours.
CEO Michael Sabia during the press conference on Hydro-Québec's 2035 Action Plan – Towards a decarbonized and prosperous Quebec. Montreal, November 1, 2023. Photo Pierre-Paul Poulin
That same year, Quebec Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc added more, citing a report from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Hydro-Québec performed poorly compared to 84 other electric utilities in North America.
In his most recent strategic plan, presented in November, new CEO Michael Sabia indicated that he wanted to change things by making improving service quality his first priority.
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Reverse the trend
“A 1% reduction doesn’t seem like much,” the vice president herself admitted of her goal. However, given the increase in outages in recent years, such a goal is more important than it seems, she argued.
Claudine Bouchard, Executive Vice President and Head of Infrastructure Operations at Hydro-Québec Photo credit: Martin Jolicoeur Photo Martin Jolicoeur
“The number of breakdowns is already stabilizing [dans le contexte actuel] would be an important goal, she explained. Nevertheless, we have set ourselves the goal of reducing it by 1% by 2024 [ce]even though the impacts of climate change are accelerating.”
When asked about the increase in breakdowns observed in recent years, Ms Bouchard said it fluctuates from year to year. In the last five years it has happened that they have increased by 8% in the same year.
Felling and pruning
To reverse the trend, Hydro plans to double its efforts to control vegetation around electrical transmission wires and lines. Contact of branches or trees with the network is currently the main cause of disruption.
Hydro-Québec has announced that it will invest $130 million this year just to carry out pruning work and cut down risky trees. This is 10% more than last year, but certainly twice as much as Hydro spent on this task in 2019, explained Claudine Bouchard.
According to estimates, 75,000 trees will have to be felled, around 22,000 km of lines will have to be secured and failures caused by vegetation will have to be reduced by 30% by 2028.
In addition, Hydro wants to maintain its maintenance activities to increase the resilience of its network. Plans are also announced to replace 28,000 wooden poles, introduce a few hundred composite poles and lay 7 km of cables.
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