SaskPower looking at ways to expand alerts for power outages

By Derek Craddock

The company responsible for lighting and powering most of Saskatchewan is working on a way to let more customers know about planned outages.

This comes after a planned outage was scheduled for Prince Albert, Candle Lake and surrounding rural areas on Monday morning from 6 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.

SaskPower sent the first notice of the outage on Friday afternoon, and a reminder around 5:37 on Monday morning, nearly 20 minutes before the lights went out. That alert was sent via the app, the SaskPower website, and in a tweet on X.

But what about those who don’t have the app, an X account, or have most of their notifications switched off and don’t see the app until everything goes dark?

SaskPower said it is looking at a possible expansion of how it informs its customers about outages.

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“We are actually piloting a direct outreach to customers for outages in the future by a phone call …We’re kind of in the early stages of that,” said Joel Cherry, a spokesperson with SaskPower. “But for the time being, the primary means we’re reaching customers is through radio or through our usual channels (like) the app, our website, and via Twitter or X.”

Similar programs already exist for other power and energy companies in Canada. Hydro One in Ontario allows customers to sign up for alerts via text message and email. Epcor in Alberta will also send text alerts in the event of an outage on top of notifications on social media and its website.

Currently, Cherry said SaskPower will try to give as much notice as it can in the event a planned outage has to take place. However, it all depends on how long they need the power to be out.

“It depends on the size of the outage. This was a short one, which also tends to be the case for transmission outages. But if we have a case where we’re replacing poles or something like that and we have to have something off for several hours, if it’s on the distribution system we’ll actually put door hangers out and let the customers know directly that way,” he said.

Cherry added that planned outages happen almost every day in Saskatchewan as a way to make sure SaskPower’s systems are still working.

“We have to take the power off in order to do preventative maintenance or to operate our system, and that means that we don’t have bigger planned outages later. It’s a standard part of the way we do our work,” Cherry said.