An analysis of power outage data shows that there was at least one unplanned outage in Nova Scotia nearly every day in 2024.
Over the year, there were more than 4,700 outages, recording just a single day without an unplanned outage.
CBC News reviewed Nova Scotia Power’s online power outage map each day throughout 2024 to track reported outages. Parts of urban centres like Halifax and Sydney experienced dozens of outages over the year, though rural and remote parts of the province also dealt with inconsistent power.
The typical reliability standard is fewer than two outages per person per year, said University of Calgary energy economics professor Lucija Muehlenbachs.
“So I’d say it sounds like a tremendous number of outages in terms of frequency.”
Last year, Nova Scotia Power was fined by the province’s utility regulator for again failing to meet certain performance standards, with its average outages per customer at 2.18 in 2023, above the target of 2.05 for that year.
The company has also previously been fined for failing to meet 2019, 2021 and 2022 targets.
“We take those performance standards very seriously,” said Matt Drover, Nova Scotia Power’s senior director of energy delivery. “We know that we need to do more.”
He said the utility is investing $1.3 billion toward reliability upgrades over the next five years. This includes plans to spend $45 million each year on trimming trees — nearly double what the company was spending a few years ago.
That’s a key part of Nova Scotia Power’s new five-year reliability plan, a comprehensive version of which was released in December.
According to the utility, trees coming into contact with power lines is the main cause of outages during storms.
This was also one of the top explanations reported throughout 2024 on Nova Scotia Power’s online power outage map, which lists reasons for outages.
Trees on power lines is also a top outage cause in other jurisdictions, especially during storms, said Muehlenbachs, adding that outages have generally become more common across North America thanks to climate change and the heightened severity of storms.
“It’s been tremendously costly [for power utilities] because of the need for … investing in resiliency to climate change,” she said.
She added that demand for electricity is only increasing as more people adopt heat pumps and electric cars.
“Having reliable power is just going to become more and more important.”
Nova Scotia Power has increased its rates several times in recent years to “strengthen the reliability of the power system, to meet the growing demand for electricity, and to protect against increasingly severe weather.”
According to the reliability plan, Nova Scotia Power has identified priority regions of the province for investment.
Drover said the company looked at where trees have grown significantly in recent years to target its tree trimming. It also looked at the reliability performance of every Nova Scotia community and is investing in areas most affected by severe storms like Fiona and Dorian.
In addition, Nova Scotia Power is looking to modernize the province’s power grid. Drover said the utility is installing new devices that work automatically to reduce the number of customers affected by an outage.
“When the outage occurs, the devices communicate with each other, they understand where the issue is, and they can automatically” section off portions of the power line, Drover said, so that outages are more localized rather than affecting an entire area.
Nova Scotia Power estimates the improvements in its five-year plan will reduce the average outage duration by about 20 per cent.
In addition to tracking Nova Scotia’s power outages, CBC News also checked New Brunswick Power’s outage map for comparison.
While there were unplanned outages nearly every day for Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick there were 34 days where the lights were on across that province.
Planned maintenance was the most common explanation for outages observed by CBC News. There were more than 1,600 planned outages spanning 180 days in 2024 that were needed to safely work on reliability upgrades, Nova Scotia Power said in a statement.
Some of the other top outage reasons observed were beyond the control of the utility: weather events like high winds and fires.
No hurricanes hit Nova Scotia in 2024 but nonetheless there were more than 100 hours of above 80 km/h winds, Drover said.
He added there were also more than 300 accidents involving vehicles hitting power poles.
This is not the first time CBC News looked at power outages in Nova Scotia. A similar audit in 2020 had nearly identical results: not a single day observed that year without an unplanned outage in the province.
Keeping electricity prices low is not the only thing people are interested in, especially as society moves toward electrification, said Muehlenbachs.
“When we have [more] home heating or electric vehicles … having reliable power is just going to become more and more important,” she said.
