REGINA — More than 110,000 SaskPower customers were left without electricity at some point during the powerful wind storm that swept through the province May 13 and 14.
Joel Cherry, a media relations and issues management consultant with SaskPower, described the storm as a “significant event” because of impacts to the transmission system.
“Our transmission lines feed into large areas, so if a transmission line goes down, all the distribution lines attached to it also go down,” Cherry told SaskToday.
According to its annual report for 2024-25, SaskPower has more than 560,000 customers across the province, so nearly 20 per cent of its customers were without power at some point during the storm.
Saskatoon did not have any “significant” outages, he said, but approximately 50,000 of the outages were in Regina, he said.
“At one point, we had several transmission lines go down that were serving the city,” said Cherry.
Cherry pointed out there were some outages that weren’t caused by the storm, such as one May 13 due to a pole fire in Prince Albert, but the vast majority of the issues were from the weather.
The large outages began in the evening of May 13 in the southwest. A line in the Eastend area went down, and while it only affected about 10 buildings, Cherry said that due to the strong winds, crews couldn’t start repairs until the following evening. The affected customers were back online at 12:45 a.m. May 15.
Cherry added the worst time for power failures was likely between 3 and 6 p.m. on May 14.
“The biggest challenge, by far, is the wind itself. We have gusts of up to 100 kilometres an hour that caused the damage. And because the winds are so high, it’s not safe for us to work in bucket trucks up in the air," he said.
In the case of the incident in the Eastend area, crews arrived to tackle the work, but they couldn’t complete repairs until the winds declined.
Rain occurred in some areas as well, which Cherry said added to the challenge of accessing transmission lines.
The only customers that remained offline from May 14 and into the following morning were between Lake Alma and Radville in the southeast.
The wind warning for the province has been lifted, but strong winds persisted into May 15.
Some localized outages are still happening, he said. A lot of tree branches have come down and SaskPower might not immediately be aware of the extent of the damage. Localized issues will be addressed May 15 and into the weekend.
Any customers who are without power are asked to check SaskPower’s online outage map or its X feed. If service hasn't resumed in an area where power is back online, Cherry said it’s likely because there’s a more localized issue to be addressed, so call the outage centre at 310-2220.
“With the high winds, there’s the potential for downed lines with trees on power lines, and anyone who encounters that should stay at least 10 metres away and report it to our outage centre as well, because even if the line doesn’t appear to be live … it’s still possible that it could be energized and in that case it’s very dangerous," said Cherry.
