BC Hydro to start Duck Lake Interconnection Project

BC Hydro will soon be starting some of the work on their Duck Lake Interconnection Project. Crews will be working on Beaver Lake road doing pole replacements commencing approximately Feb 9, although an exact start date is not definite. The work will go from next week to about mid-April and will take place weekdays between the hours of 7am and 7pm with very little, if any, weekend work.  This work will have minimal impact on the public: There may be minor traffic disruptions and there will be temporary, localized power outages.

Traffic:

There will be traffic control on site and lane closures in effect.  Most of the work is along the north side of the road, but there are a few poles on the south side.

Power outages:

As for the power outages, they will be required at certain times during the work for the safety of the public and of crews. For safety reasons crews are prohibited from performing some of the work while the lines have live electricity flowing through them. However, through switching customers to other circuits BC Hydro will be able to limit those power outages to a very small number of customers.  The customers affected are mostly businesses and the crew is working with those customers to coordinate outages outside of business hours. There are a few residential customers that will be affected, and the crew will be doing those notifications in person.

The project:

The Duck Lake Interconnection Project will improve electrical service in Lake Country. This project was presented by BC Hydro to Council a few months ago. It involves connecting BC Hydro's Lake Country and Westside Road customers to FortisBC's new Duck Lake Substation via Beaver Lake Road.

The area is currently served by BC Hydro's ageing Woods Lake Substation which gets its power from a single powerline running 30 kilometres from Vernon. That system is vulnerable because it is ageing, because of the distance the line must travel, and because it is reaching capacity.  The Duck Lake Interconnection Project will solve all of those issues. Getting power from the substation next door will eliminate the 30 kilometres of vulnerability, also the Duck Lake substation is brand new (so going from something at end of life to something at beginning of life), and the new equipment will provide enough capacity for the foreseeable future.