Power restored in Halifax area following widespread outage during heat wave

The Nova Scotia Power headquarters is seen in Halifax on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Power has been restored to thousands of homes in the Halifax area following a widespread outage Friday evening during a heat wave.

At the height of the outage, 44,000 Nova Scotia Power (NSP) customers were without power. The outage began around 8 p.m. and lasted several hours.

The outage stretched from Bedford to East Dover and Ketch Harbour.

Nearly half of the impacted homes were back on the grid before 11 p.m., with the remainder expected to be online by midnight.

When the power went out, the temperature was 30 C in the Halifax area with the humidex making it feel like 36, according to Environment Canada data.

NSP said the outage was not caused by high demand from air conditioners, also known as a “load shedding” event.

“We can confirm this is not related to grid load; it is strictly an isolated equipment issue at the substation,” read a social media post from NSP Friday around 10 p.m.

Initially, NSP’s system mistakenly listed the outage as “salt contamination,” but it was actually due to a “specific equipment failure” at the Lakeside substation.

Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency (HRFE) told CTV News there was a fire at the substation.

“They have one section of the substation that runs at 138,000 volts. There’s a series of switches that control that area, and one of those switches let go, exploded and caught fire,” said HRFE District Chief of Operations Robert Hebb.

Hebb added that the switch is “about the size of a 10-gallon pail” and is filled with oil.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Callum Smith

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