December 15, 2025
Earlier this month, members of our Reliability team were in Antigonish County for a community reliability meeting at the Heatherton Community Centre (December 1). The meeting was an open invitation to all our customers in the area to talk about the reliability of your power service. We thank those who shared their time with us and asked important questions. The topics ranged from tree trimming, right-of-way clearing, outages, and overall investments in the area. This was also an opportunity for our team to share an update on work that’s underway in your community, or planned, to ensure you have service you can rely on. For those unable to attend, we wanted to share this letter, so you have the same information.
Tree trimming: Over the last five years (2021–2025) we have cleared trees and branches from 160 km of power lines in the Antigonish area with an investment of more than $4.6 million. More work is planned next year (2026). This is critical as trees coming into contact with power lines is one of the leading causes of outages across the province.
Reliability work: Another way we are improving reliability is by moving power poles and lines out of the woods and closer to the road. This makes it easier for our crews to access equipment during inspections, make proactive upgrades or repairs, and to restore power in the event of an outage. This work has been taking place along Highway 4 and Highway 104 in conjunction with the Department of Public Works.
2025: Installed smart devices on our transmission lines to help identify problems before they arise. They can detect accumulation of ice and changes in temperature and will give our Control Centre a better line of sight on what’s happening on and around the lines.
2025–26: Continuing work with the Town of Antigonish on its Grid Modernization project connecting their new power lines and substation to the electricity grid.
Our Reliability Plan involves a $1.3 billion investment in the power system over five years. It includes investing an average of $250 million in projects across Nova Scotia each year, which will make service more reliable for customers and strengthen the grid in the face of climate change. The three areas of focus are expanding our vegetation management program (tree trimming), preparing the system to better withstand the impacts of extreme weather we’re experiencing by upgrading power lines, poles, and transformers, and modernizing the grid by using monitoring and control systems that will help detect and restore power outages faster.
Our team continues important work to improve service in your area and we are committed to keeping you informed. Engagement is an important part of our reliability work and we look forward to continuing the conversation. Please reach out to your Reliability Advisor, Benjamin Arsenault (benjamin.arsenault@nspower.ca), if you have any reliability questions.
You can also learn more about our Five-Year Reliability Plan and more reliability work here >
Sincerely,
Keith O'Callaghan | Reliability Work Execution, Nova Scotia Power
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