Essex County Council is asking Hydro One to speed up infrastructure investments to address ongoing power flickers and outages in the region.
A notice of motion was approved by council on Wednesday evening, calling for the power company to prioritize upgrades to its transmission infrastructure in Essex County to improve grid reliability.
The motion, put forward by Essex mayor Sherry Bondy, says residents, farmers, and businesses across multiple municipalities continue to deal with frequent power interruptions, causing disruptions, equipment damage, and appliance failures.
Council acknowledged that Hydro One has plans for transmission investments in Southwestern Ontario but says the current disruptions continue to affect residents’ quality of life and businesses’ day-to-day operations.
Bondy says Hydro One needs to answer to the people of Essex County.
“It’s not just Harrow, it’s not just Essex... it’s Harrow, Essex, Amherstburg, Kingsville, and the scope is growing and growing and growing. So, it’s to the point where I think Hydro One needs to step up and take more accountability because it really is disruptive. We’re doing what we can locally, but we need them to be the face of these flickers; we also need reassurance that they’re investing.”
Amherstburg deputy mayor Chris Gibb says this is a constant issue in Amherstburg.
“It’s not just inconvenient, it’s past the point of inconvenience. It’s gotten to costing people money in appliances that fail, businesses lose productivity when it takes 20 minutes, 30 minutes for their point of sale systems to come back up. This is costing people money, and it’s gone way beyond an irritation at this point.”
Amherstburg mayor Michael Prue says he was very unhappy with a recent presentation to Amherstburg council by Hydro One.
“They could not answer basic questions, they could not answer where they were spending money, they could not answer why the flickers are so constant in our municipality, and we have heard nothing from them since.”
As part of the motion, the county will send a copy of the resolution to Ontario’s energy minister, local MPPs, the Ontario Energy Board and all lower-tier municipalities, calling for a coordinated response to improve power reliability.
Council members also urged the public to contact their local MPPs when these flickers occur, as Hydro One is a provincially regulated agency.
Hydro One manages major power transmission lines and transformer stations across the region, including a major transmission line connecting Chatham to Lakeshore. They provide electricity in rural parts of several local municipalities, and shares service areas with local providers like Essex Powerlines such as in Amherstburg and parts of the Town of Essex.