St. Catharines utility company sinking another $3.1 million into boosting power grids
Published January 24, 2023 at 10:38 am
Alectra Utilities, the hydro company that services St. Catharines, is sinking another $3.1 million into its infrastructure in a bid to boost its power grid.
That brings the utilities company total investment in the Garden City up to $13.4 million over the past few years as it sunk $4.3 million into capital improvements in 2021 and another $6 million into the city systems in 2022.
“With parts of St. Catharines’ system reaching the end of its life cycle, renewing the deteriorating infrastructure is necessary to maintain reliability,” the company said in a release.
“This series of infrastructure upgrades will stabilize the existing system and reduce outage impacts in the community.”
With a healthy handful of power outages throughout the city over the course of the past few years, Alectra acknowledged, “The main cause of reliability issues in St. Catharines is defective equipment and interference from vehicle accidents or animal contacts. The new builds will enable more grid flexibility and quicker service restoration.”
The company believes these projects “will improve reliability for residential and commercial customers.” The following areas will see these improvements during the course of the year:
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- Replacing underground cable on Welland Road, Bunting Road, Carlton Street, and Cushman Road, reducing outage impacts for customers.
- Extending a new feeder line into the downtown core, providing contingency capacity to customers.
- Rejuvenating cables on Millward Avenue, Jeanette Drive, Trevor Court, Jacobson Avenue, Chestnut Street, Woodcrest Drive, Bolger Drive, Elma Street, Dorothy Street, The Meadows, Lakeshore Road, Stanley Street, Parnell Road, and Chancery Circle.
In 2021, Alectra invested in feeder line extensions, cable injections, cable replacements and automated switch installations, “improving reliability for customers.”
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