Working from home undoubtedly has its benefits, but it can be difficult when your power keeps shutting off.
Carol Davies works from an office in her Cambridge home, taking calls and attending meetings, but over the past few months she's noticed that her power keeps cutting off.
"I will be in a meeting and the power shuts off and I get kicked out. It's just annoying and makes this whole thing a lot harder," said Davies. "It would flicker on and off and more than usual. I think the worst one we had was like two hours long."
These frequent power outages may last for a few seconds or a few hours. In each case, Davies said she never received any notice, but thinks the frequent outages could be attributed to more people in the city using the grid or the uptick in electric cars.
"Cambridge has more people than ever and I'm not sure if the grid was made to handle this much, especially with more people working from home. I've called Grandbridge, but haven't gotten any answers."
Grandbridge Energy provides electricity to approximately 111,000 customers in Brantford, Cambridge, the Township of North Dumfries and the County of Brant.
Sheri Ojero, manager of corporate communications noted while it might seem like there are more power outages, 2023 was actually below the 5-year average.
In 2023 there was a total of 443 planned and unplanned power outages.
"Unplanned outages vary in frequency and duration because the cause is beyond our control," said Ojero.
These unplanned outages can be caused by animal contact, loss of service from Hydro One, motor vehicle accidents or severe weather conditions.
Grandbridge saw some of the highest unplanned outages in December 2023 from a rise in squirrels coming in contact with their equipment.
"The rise in squirrel contacts in Dec. 2023 is attributable to milder weather, resulting in more animal activity than usual for this time of the year," added Ojero. "When animals contact the system infrastructure, a crew must be sent to the outage site to investigate and confirm the cause of the outage and make the necessary equipment repairs or replacements."
When animals contact the system infrastructure, a crew must be sent to the outage site to investigate and confirm the cause of the outage and make the necessary equipment repairs or replacements.
Ojero adds that GrandBridge has an extensive wildlife protection program to help mitigate animal contact with their equipment.
If there is a planned outage that will last more than an hour, Grandbridge will provide customers with at least two days advance notice by phone or email, Ojero said. Any capital projects or major renovations where power could be out for an extended period of time will also see residents getting a notification in writing with a detailed schedule.
Whatever the reasoning is, Davies hopes that her workflow will stop being interrupted by pesky power outages so she can continue to enjoy the benefits of working from home.
