This page lists all of the non-scheduled outages in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro Inc territory for the most recent calendar year. Efforts have been made to make outage causes in line with our regulated reporting requirements while simplifying for public use. Definitions for causes can be found at the bottom of the page. This page will be updated monthly to reflect the previous month’s outages.
SAIDI/SAIFI 2024
There are two standard indices used in the industry that measure outage performance. The first is the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) which measures, on average, how long NOTL Hydro customers are without power over the course of a year. NOTL Hydro is typically a little under an hour which is close to but slightly below the Ontario average. The second is the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) which measures, on average, how often NOTL Hydro customers are without power over the course of a year. Recently, NOTL Hydro has been averaging less than one average outage per customer which is well below the Ontario industry average.
Outage Details 2024
Table is under maintenance
Cause Codes
- Scheduled -Interruption due to the disconnection at a selected time for the purpose of construction or maintenance.
- Foreign Interference – Interruption caused by external factors, such as those caused by customer equipment, DERs not owned by distributors, animals, vehicles, dig-ins, vandalism, sabotage, foreign objects and cybersecurity events. These will be displayed by the following categories in the chart above:
- Wildlife – Raccoon, squirrels, birds, etc.
- Car Crash / Vehicle – Civilian crashes into poles, transformers or other system equipment.
- Dig-in – Caused by civilian or 3rd party damage to underground infrastructure.
- Customer Equipment – Caused by Customer-own equipment.
- Human Other – none of the items above.
- Tree Contact – Interruption caused by faults resulting from tree contact with energized circuits. Weather will be noted in the description if tree contact occurred during inclement weather.
- Lightning – The lightning category includes all interruptions caused by lightning. This may be by a direct strike contacting the wires or another piece of equipment, or by a lightning- induced flashover of the wires or to another piece of equipment.
- Equipment Failure – Interruption resulting from the failure of distributor-owned equipment due to deterioration, insufficient maintenance or defective equipment/material. Examples include:
- An insulator burned out and caused an interruption.
- A crossarm brace bolt broke and resulting in an interruption.
- Corrosion caused a transformer oil leak resulting in an interruption.
- Moisture entered a transformer and caused an interruption.
- The interruption was caused by equipment failure but the root cause of the equipment failure is unknown.
- Adverse Weather – Interruption due to distributor equipment being subject to abnormal environments, such as salt spray, industrial contamination, humidity, corrosion, vibration, fire or flooding.
- Loss of Supply – Interruption due to problems associated with the transmission system (Hydro One). These outages can not be controlled by NOTL Hydro.
- Human Element – Interruption due to the interface of distributor staff with the distribution system. Only interruptions caused by distributor staff should be reported under this cause code, including improper protection settings, improper system operation and improper construction & installation.
- Unknown – Interruption with no apparent cause.