Hydro Ottawa Limited Major Event: October 18, 2020
Prior To Major Event
1. Did the distributor have any prior warning that the Major Event would occur?
Yes
2. If the distributor did have prior warning, did the distributor arrange to have extra employees on duty or on standby prior to the Major Event beginning? If so, please give a brief description of arrangements.
Yes. A dedicated switching crew was arranged to keep the outage time as minimal as possible.
3. If the distributor did have prior warning, did the distributor issue any media announcements to the public warning of possible outages resulting from the pending Major Event? If so, through what channels?
No media announcements were issued by Hydro Ottawa.
4. Did the distributor train its staff on the response plans for a Major Event? If so, please give a brief description of the training process.
Hydro Ottawa has an established Electrical Emergency Response Plan and Organization. Formal training is completed annually according to Market Rules, and a weekly preparation meeting is held to refresh on-call management personnel.
During the Major Event
1. Please identify the main contributing Cause of the Major Event as per the table in section 2.1.4.2.5 of the Electricity Reporting and Record Keeping Requirements. Please provide a brief description of the event (i.e. what happened?).
The outage which caused the Major Event was due to a planned Loss of Supply from Hydro One which affected 3 Hydro Ottawa stations. Hydro Ottawa had prior warning to this event. There was also an outage due to defective equipment on the same day.
2. Was the IEEE Standard 1366 used to identify the scope of the Major Event? If not, why not?
Yes. This event was considered to be a Major Event Day based on the IEEE Standard 1366 method. The daily SAIDI value of 12.1 on October 18, 2020, exceeded the daily SAIDI threshold of 5.14. The total number of customer hours interrupted was 69,519.
3. When did the Major Event begin (date and time)?
October 18, 2020 @ 02:00
4. Did the distributor issue any information about this Major Event, such as estimated times of restoration, to the public during the Major Event? If yes, please provide a brief description of the information. If no, please explain.
Initial customer notifications were issued four days prior to the event, and a reminder was also issued the day prior. Notifications were also sent to impacted Community associations and BIAs, as well as respective City Councillors five days prior to the event. The notifications provided each stakeholder, including impacted customers, with contact information to reach us should they have questions or concerns about this event.
Because this was a planned outage, the time of restoration was issued in the initial customer notifications, on the website and through social media - as well as Hydro One communications. Crew updates were issued during the event on Hydro Ottawa's Twitter account. A total of 3 updates were issued : 2:30 a.m. (outage notice), 2:45 a.m. (crew arrived), 8:45 a.m. (power restored)
5. How many customers were interrupted during the Major Event? What percentage of the distributor’s total customer base did the interrupted customers represent?
9186 customers were interrupted. This is 2.66% of HOL's total customer base.
6. How many hours did it take to restore 90% of the customers who were interrupted?
6.8 hrs
7. Were there any outages associated with Loss of Supply during the Major Event? If so, please report on the duration and frequency of Loss of Supply outages.
Yes.
SAIDI due to LoS: 0.18
SAIFI LoS: 0.03
3 outages, 6575 customers affected, 1820 customer hours.
8. In responding to the Major Event, did the distributor utilize assistance through a third party mutual assistance agreement with other utilities? If yes, please provide the name of the utilities who provided the assistance?
No
9. Did the distributor run out of any needed equipment or materials during the Major Event? If so, please describe the shortages.
No
After the Major Event
1. What steps, if any, are being taken to be prepared for or mitigate such Major Events in the future (i.e., staff training, process improvements, system upgrades)?
None