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Power Restoration

When the power goes out, Halton Hills Hydro’s crews work to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.

Some facts about our system:

Halton Hills Hydro owns and maintains

  • 12 Substations and 1 Transformer Station – that receive power from Hydro One’s Transmission system and convert it into lower voltages that we distribute throughout our community.
  • 919 km Overhead Powerlines 
  • 764 km Underground Cable 
  • 9447 Poles
  • Service Area: 280 sq. km
  • Operations staff: 12
  1. Public Safety – if there is an emergency situation such as live wires are down on a road, a vehicle accident or fire, ensuring public safety is our first priority before we begin restoring power. If you see downed powerlines, stay back 10 meters (length of a school bus) and call 911.
  2. Main Feeders and Sub-Feeders – When we report power outages on our map, you will often see us refer to feeders – these are the main circuits that supply power to the largest number of customers.
    We try to restore power to the largest number of customers at a time so we work to restore feeders first.
  3. Smaller outages affecting fewer customers or individual customers – sometimes these outages can take the most time to restore because they can involve downed trees or damaged equipment that can take time to clear and repair.

We understand that it can be frustrating to not know how long the power will be out. There are a number of reasons why we often can’t provide an estimated time to restoration.

  1. If we are dealing with a public safety issue, we often have to coordinate with other services such as police and fire.
  2. Sometimes the outage is actually due to equipment outside of our service area affecting the supply of power to a part of our territory. In these cases, we need to wait for Hydro One to make repair to their equipment so that we can restore power.
  3. Sometimes it can take time to locate the cause of the outage. While we do have automated equipment on our major feeders that helps us narrow down the location of the fault, we do not have this equipment on the smaller lines. In these cases, our crews have to patrol the affected area until they can identify the source of the outage.
  4. When customers report information such as wires or trees, this can help us pinpoint the source of the outage. Unfortunately, sometimes customers will falsely report that they have seen a hazard thinking that they may receive a higher priority. This only slows us down looking for a hazard that isn’t there.

Once we have identified the actual cause of the outage, we are able to make repairs and restore power. If the repairs will take a while, we will then be able to update our power outage map with an estimated restoration time.

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