Community Reliability Meeting: A Letter to Queens County

Meeting Highlights and Updates 

Our team—including leaders from our Reliability and Energy Delivery teams—met with residents on Tuesday, May 20, 2025 to discuss our plans to make power more reliable for your community and incorporate your feedback in our planning. 

Tree Trimming 

Tree trimming and vegetation management continue to be our top priority as trees contacting our power lines is the number one cause of outages in Nova Scotia. Working together is important to keeping everyone’s power on—during the meeting, we explained how we work with residents during our tree trimming efforts, especially if we need to trim trees outside of our usual right-of-way. 

Line Inspections and Upgrades 

We proactively inspect all our main power lines every two years to identify issues and fix them before outages happen. 

• In 2024, we inspected our distribution line and transmission line that provide power to Greenfield, Labelle, and Buckfield. This helped shape our replacement and upgrade plans.
• We are replacing old poles, adding new smart equipment, and upgrading power lines to make the system stronger and reduce outages.
• We are also preparing to upgrade the power line along Labelle Road from single-phase to a three-phase power line, which will make the system more reliable for homes and businesses.

Proactive Equipment 

Many of your questions were about the new electrical protective devices called TripSavers, which have recently been installed in areas in Queens County. Here’s a bit more information about TripSavers: 

• TripSavers act like a smart fuse. If something touches the power lines causing a fault, the TripSaver will quickly turn off and then restore power up to three times to see if the problem clears itself.
• This device helps protect the electrical equipment and keep outages shorter.
• TripSavers do not damage your home or appliances.
• We plan to install more TripSavers in the area to keep improving reliability. 

Next Steps  

The work in Queens County will continue to focus on:  

• targeted tree trimming and vegetation management, especially in high-risk areas,
• ongoing equipment upgrades, modernization, and proactive maintenance, and
• a full voltage study and the implementation of further infrastructure investments as outlined in our reliability plan. 

We are committed to keeping you informed and ensuring you have reliable power. For more information on our five-year reliability plan and investments please visit here >  

Sincerely, 

Charlene MacMullin | Director of Reliability, Nova Scotia Power