The Crown corporation’s list of customers waiting to connect has never been larger as new CEO Michael Sabia admits Hydro’s service is “not up to par” and he plans to spend billions of dollars to to correct the situation.
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“We currently have 492 connection or electricity inquiries from residential customers that were made over 24 months ago. These affect both primary and secondary residences,” François Ramsay, head of information access at Hydro-Québec, responded to the Journal.
The latter adds that Hydro-Québec is still seeing a decrease in delays in several regions, despite the fact that requests for all types of work have exploded in the last two years.
Fear of the coming winter
Johanne Bossé and her partner are afraid to join this customer list, which will have to wait several months to be connected.
“We are moving into our new house in Chertsey in Lanaudière on November 23rd and we will still have no electricity. I signed an agreement with Hydro in February 2023. But since then, the communication time has always been too long and too many stakeholders were involved,” she says.
The most annoying thing, she adds, is that the couple had to pay Hydro $41,000 in October to install poles and overhead lines, but nothing has been done yet.
“And there we have to rent a chalet for $1,700 a month to live for a month or even two if we’re lucky. “We no longer have any cash and the construction work on our house is on hold,” says the 48-year-old.
“Out of control” delays
The Journal has highlighted several cases of delays in connecting citizens in several regions of Quebec in recent months. Some owners have been waiting for two and a half years. Most have to pay thousands of dollars for heat from generators, and some have suffered damage to their property in cold winter weather.
In its written response, the state-owned company emphasizes that “these delays are beyond the control of Hydro-Québec, in particular with changes made to the project by the customer, a delay in obtaining an easement or requests made in advance, given the complexity of the project “The work required.” In 397 of the 492 inquiries that were made more than two years ago, Hydro waited for feedback or work from customers for a period of more than a year, she defends.
In order to speed up the processing of deadlines, Hydro has already begun to adapt its practices, assures spokeswoman Cendrix Bouchard. “We prioritize the work with the greatest impact for the customer, we simplify the process of processing requests and standardize working methods. We are also working to reduce the number of stakeholders our customers have to interact with,” he says.
Hydro continues to hire employees
Through another request for information, Le Journal learned that Hydro-Québec has hired 203 full-time engineers in 2022 and 101 so far in 2023 (as of June 30). A lack of technicians is often cited as an explanation for connection delays.
Consider that 2023 is among the worst of the last 15 in terms of the number of outages at Hydro. The new boss Michael Sabia wants to spend up to 50 billion dollars to correct the situation.
“There are too many breakdowns, we don’t communicate enough with our customers and interacting with us is too complicated. We have underinvested in the resilience of our network and the quality of services we provide to our customers. We have to change that,” he said on November 2 at the presentation of Hydro-Québec’s 2035 Action Plan.
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