Summerside’s power utility has scheduled an outage for Sunday morning that will affect properties along the city’s waterfront while crews replace some aging equipment.

The city’s power utility has scheduled an outage to take place on Sunday from around 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

The outage will affect between ten and 15 customers out of the 8000 it has in the city.

Properties along the city’s waterfront will be without power for the duration of the outage. Some of those include businesses like the Holland College Summerside Waterfront Campus, Holland College Marine Training Centre, the Summerside Marina and Curling Complex, Harbourfront Theatre and Eptek Art & Culture Centre.

The outage has been scheduled in order to replace two pad-mount transformers that were found to be rusting. 

“We regularly inspect our transformers and these ones were flagged for routine maintenance and replacement,” said Garrett Webster, senior utility engineer for Summerside Electric.

“These ones in particular, because of their proximity to the harbour and the salt water, they’re just experiencing a faster rate of rusting.”

Webster said normally these pieces of infrastructure last between 30 to 50 years when they aren’t exposed to salt water conditions.

He said the rust hasn’t impacted how the equipment function, but it’s time they were replaced.

Webster said the outage was planned for a day that would minimize the amount of disruption for businesses and the public.

“We do our best to work around existing business operations.”

The project will be completed with all internal staff and resources.

The next step will be to send the old infrastructure out for further review and assessment to see if the internal equipment can be refurbished for future use. 

For further updates on the city’s scheduled outage — or any further outages if they occur, residents can find more information on the city’s website.