"Outage again this morning! How can it be that in Québec, where there is so much electrical expertise, conductors (wires) aren’t underground? "
A question from
NancyFossambault-sur-le-lac February 25, 2016
As on all social media, we post questions exactly as we receive them. They are then translated.
Our answer
It is never a pleasant experience to go without power. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we want you to know that our crews work hard and do their absolute best to restore power as soon as possible.
However, undergrounding is not the ideal solution. To underground all 97,000 km of our distribution lines, it would require a colossal investment of over 330 billion dollars! In normal conditions, undergrounding projects cost about $3,4M per kilometre, and this figure can be driven up by a number of factors: the complexity of the surroundings, the type of soil, the number of customers connected to the line, and even the number of telecommunications companies that also use our structures.
And even then, underground systems are not fully protected from malfunctions and breakdowns. As a matter of fact, when they do malfunction, it takes us longer to find and repair the problem, as the equipment in these systems is more challenging to get to.
During an outage, you can consult the outages map, updated every 15 minutes, or use the mobile app to see its cause and find out when power will be restored.