Rick Ilott isn’t too happy about laying off his employees for a day.
The owner of Wizard Industries, a company that manufactures retractable screen doors, is preparing to send his workers home on Wednesday, June 25, because B.C. Hydro is conducting maintenance near his warehouse that requires him to shut off the power during business hours.
On June 9, Ilott received an email from the electric power company notifying him of a scheduled outage that will affect properties on Beta Avenue south of Lougheed Highway and on Dawson Street from Beta to Yukon Crescent. The email stated they will be making electrical system improvements from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“To ensure the safety of our work crews, it will be necessary to interrupt electrical service for the time indicated,” reads the notification. “To prepare for this interruption and protect your equipment from damage, turn off all lights, electric heaters and major appliances and unplug all electronics.”
But to Ilott, that’s a lot of man-hours lost between his 20 seasonal employees on the cusp of summer when the number of screen orders skyrockets.
“It’s frustrating and it’s expensive,” he said. “If it was in November, we wouldn’t have cared, but it’s the busiest time of the year for us.”
Ilott said a service representative from B.C. Hydro told him the outage would affect 600 energy metres for a combination of businesses and residences. He suspects the maintenance is tied to pending development of the area, as his building and neighbouring properties have been purchased to make way for a proposed highrise residential building with a lowrise podium.
“I don’t think we should have to subsidize the cost of this,” he said, recommending that the power company do the repairs on a Sunday when most businesses aren’t open. “It may not be convenient for B.C. Hydro, but if they have to pay their employees overtime, they should charge it to the developer.”
But B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Mora Scott said the necessary repairs are routine maintenance to improve their ability to switch from one electrical circuit to another in the event of a fault.
“Unfortunately, this work can only be done with the power lines de-energized, which means an outage for our customers,” she said.
According to Scott, the reasoning for doing the maintenance in the daytime on the 25th is because it’s more cost-effective than doing it on a Saturday or Sunday.
“We always try to respond to the unique service needs of our customers where possible, but we also have to ensure that we operate as cost-effectively as we can,” she noted. “Project work like this is scheduled to occur during business hours on a weekday because weekend work is often significantly more expensive, so the higher cost would be passed on to our ratepayers.”
While Ilott received the email notification on June 9, Scott said B.C. Hydro left preliminary messages with business owners on May 29 informing them of the outage and giving a window of two or three business days to respond with any concerns.
“When we hadn’t heard back from them by June 4, we kind of assumed everything was OK, so we sent the outage notification to the 500-plus residential customers who would be affected and then the business customers,” she said.
Despite that, in all of his years running Wizard Industries, Ilott said he has never encountered an eight-hour scheduled outage, no matter what time of day.
“Maybe for an hour here and there, but for an entire work day? I’ve never heard of this before.”
