A Letter to Hammonds Plains & Lucasville
May 20, 2025
Thank you to those who joined us at the community meeting in Hammonds Plains on Wednesday, May 14, 2025. We appreciate the opportunity for meaningful, engaging conversation and to answer your questions directly. The sunny weather may have kept some people outdoors, so for those unable to attend, we want to ensure you are kept up to date on the important work underway to improve reliability in your community.
Meeting Highlights and Updates
Our team—including leaders from our Reliability, Energy Delivery, and Customer Care teams—had a productive discussion with MLA Rick Burns and residents, covering key elements of our reliability plan, answering questions, and finding opportunities to incorporate feedback into our reliability planning.
Key Highlights
- Voltage issue resolved: Voltage sag (a brief drop in voltage affecting power quality) experienced by the community has been investigated and resolved.
- Vegetation management: As the community matures (now approximately 30 years old), there is an increased need for vegetation work. We are continuing to trim, remove, and clear trees away from power lines and equipment to prevent outages and ensure safety.
- Tree removal collaboration: We recognize the importance of working with customers on the removal and trimming of trees on properties that could impact power to the community. We are committed to helping with this and your cooperation is essential to maintaining reliable service. We thank you for your understanding and for your partnership.
- Reliability investment: We are committed to our longer-term plan to improve reliability across Nova Scotia, which includes $1.3 billion in investments to upgrade equipment, modernize our infrastructure, and invest in the reliability of your power service.
Work Completed or Underway
- Tested safety devices and replaced a faulty trip saver (a device like a smart fuse). This device can turn the power back on automatically depending on the cause of the power disruption, so outages don’t last as long or affect as many people.
- Our team focused on troubleshooting power quality issues experienced by customers and installed special equipment to fix low voltage issues. We also added a voltage regulator; this device helps keep the power steady and reliable for the community.
- We proactively upgraded switches at the substation with more resilient and reliable equipment, and we also replaced lightning protectors to safeguard our electrical equipment against lightning strikes.
- A full voltage study is planned to assess if further improvements are required to address power quality issues.
- Proactive replacement of auto-sleeves (specialized devices used to connect and repair power lines) is scheduled for later this year.
- A new substation at Susie Lake and expansion of the Kearney Lake substation will provide more capacity to supply power to the community and support future growth in the area.
Replacements and Upgrades
- Distribution line inspection programs: We know that power equipment and infrastructure can naturally deteriorate over time. Our inspection program enables us to find issues before they cause an outage and put proactive plans in place to make the right investments at the right time.
- All distribution feeders are inspected every two years.
- The feeders/circuits servicing Pockwock, White Hills, Upper Hammonds Plains, Voyageur Lakes, Kingswood, Glen Arbour, Westwood Hills, Stillwater Lake, Highland Park, Upper Tantallon, and Yankeetown were inspected in 2024 and will continue to be inspected throughout 2025.
- Vegetation management: Since 2023, our teams and crews have removed and trimmed trees from approximately 26 km of power lines in the Hammonds Plains communities, which is an investment of approximately $909,000. In 2025, we plan to complete a minimum of 10 additional kilometres of tree trimming and removal in this area.
Next Steps
The work in Hammonds Plains and the surrounding area will continue to focus on:
- additional planned tree trimming in priority areas,
- upgrading and modernizing equipment and infrastructure, and
- continued inspections and proactive addressing of any areas of concern.
We are committed to keeping you informed and making sure you have the reliable power service you deserve. If you have questions or concerns about reliability, please feel free to reach out directly to your Reliability Advisor, Benjamin Arsenault, who would be happy to speak with you about any concerns you may have at benjamin.arsenault@nspower.ca.
For more information on our five-year reliability plan and investments please visit here >
Sincerely,
Charlene MacMullin | Senior Manager, Reliability Engagement, Nova Scotia Power
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