Medicine Hat's major industrial plants will likely be without power until late Friday as crews replace poles and restring lines knocked down by Monday's violent wind storm. - NEWS FILE PHOTO
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Medicine Hat’s major industrial plants will likely be without power until late Friday as crews replace poles and restring lines knocked down by Monday’s violent wind storm.
Power officials updated a city committee late Thursday that all residential lines were back up and operating at that time, as is priority. Now, as emergency repair work in the northwest industrial area progresses, the department is already considering changes to avoid future blackouts to plant sites.
“That will be looked at fairly quickly to see what can be done to bring in a number of redundancies,” said Boyd Mostoway, operations manager for Medicine Hat Power and Water.
As many as 7,400 addresses in the city’s franchise area, including Redcliff and parts of Cypress County, were knocked off the system on Monday afternoon when heavy wind hit the region.
That included customers along northern stretch of Box Springs Road where three separate lines snapped, cutting power to CF Industries fertilizer plant, the Methanex methanol plant, Hut 8 data processing and stranding the city’s north-end power plant.
Committee member, Coun. Robert Dumanowski, queried administrators stating that after any blackout “there is significant interest from the public.
“It was restored relatively quickly for most residents,” Dumanowski said, but there is concern about having four major power customers cutoff.
Mostoway said the city’s protocol and agreements with industrial customers is to supply residential areas first in case of disasters and force majeure situations.
“They are the last in line, but it is a very significant event for them,” he said.
This week Hut 8 officials told the News they experienced little on-site damage from the storm but were powered down. Damage appears to have missed the two petrochemical plants on the east side of the roadway as well.
Mostoway said damage to lines appears to follow a track right between the two sites.
The loss of three major power lines in the area cut off supply, including one that was rebuilt last year after a large grass fire.
“We can feed most parts of the city from almost anywhere, but there is a problem in the industrial area because of where it is,” he said. “But there are some things we can do to be more resilient.”
Those measures could be included in the next capital budget, due for approval in December, or sooner if need be, he said.
The two-generator northern facility was located in the north side to avoid relying on a single power plant site – the main river valley facility – in case of natural disaster at either.
When it was commissioned in 2018, a second connection to the Alberta Grid known as an inter-TIE, was installed to pair with the south-end connection.
That system design performed well this week, said Mostoway. The main power plant is meeting the city’s needs with some export capacity considering the industrial plants are not drawing power, and the ability to import power on an emergency basis is in place. When the plants come back online, they will be supplied by the north-end plant.
Those two generators at the north-end plant require power to start, which right now is typically drawn from incoming lines. Without an initial supply generator, known as a black-start unit, the ability to operate the plant and industrial complexes on a closed loop isn’t possible.
About 38 residences were still without power, said Mostoway, owing to damage on private property, such as downed masts or other complications, that is the homeowner’s responsibility.
