HYDRO ONE TO TRIM MUSKOKA TREES EVERY THREE YEARS
HUNTSVILLE — Thankfully, the days of combating forest growth with deadly chemicals are a remote past.
A new forest management program to ensure more reliable hydro service means Ontario Hydro will now trim trees near power lines on a three-year schedule instead of eight to 10 years.
Hydro One Inc., Ontario’s primary electricity transmission and distribution company, announced plans to invest approximately $16 million in more new technologies and additional hazardous trees trimming to reduce the number, size and duration of power outages in the Muskoka region.
At the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference held in Toronto in January 2019, Bracebridge Mayor Graydon Smith says in a release that he spoke with the Ontario Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines to reinforce the need for a reliable and secure electricity supply to underpin economic growth and community prosperity in the Muskoka region.
The release says this new initiative by Hydro One “will help to address the system reliability issues facing Bracebridge and the other municipalities in Muskoka.
Over the next two years, Hydro One is investing to modernize its distribution grid with new devices to remotely monitor the system.
This investment will allow the company to quickly and remotely identify the location of an outage and take action to restore power from the Ontario Grid Control Center, Hydro One’s central hub that oversees daily operations.
As part of Hydro One’s new program to trim hazardous trees, corridors in the region will now be trimmed every thee-years instead of the original 8 to 10-year cycle.
The improvements include:
- the installation of 450 communicating fault indicators to better detect the location of an outage;
- connecting 38 smart switches to limit the amount of customers impacted by outages and improve power restoration times; and, • tree trimming along 2,000 kilometers of power lines.
“The communities in Muskoka have advocated for some time for improvements to the Hydro One distribution system to reduce the frequency and duration of power outages in this region. We are very pleased to see Hydro One moving forward with the system improvements announced today, as the reliability of the hydro distribution system is crucial to area businesses and the initiatives targeted at enhancing system dependability for Hydro One customers will support enhanced economic development in the region,” said Smith.
July 12, 2020 @ 12:57 pm
You are lucky then. Hydro One recently chopped down 3 or 4 beautiful pines and cedars on their property but in front of our property in Tiny, Ontario, which provided us shade and curb appeal. When we asked could they not be trimmed for safety from hydro wires, we were told no, they had been trimmed once before and Hydro One was not doing this anymore.
December 9, 2020 @ 5:55 pm
Having the same problem in Tiny today. Why dont Hydro care about the enviroment!