City of Summerside calls off blackouts, saying Maritime Electric has reversed plan to slash power [Video]

Though a plan to institute two-hour rolling blackouts Tuesday night has been called off, Summerside’s mayor says he’s not happy about how his city of 17,000 people has been treated by Maritime Electric this week.

In an interview with CBC News late Tuesday, Dan Kutcher said the utility that serves most of Prince Edward Island — with the exception of Summerside, which has a municipally owned power company — told city officials it would be drastically reducing the amount of power it was going to allow into Summerside on Tuesday night.

They were told the supply would drop from 28 megawatts to just two, the mayor said.  

“Our teams are being told that [Maritime Electric] redirected power to Cavendish Farms, which would be 14 megawatts, to bring them back online,” Kutcher said, speaking of the frozen foods processor that is one of the Island’s largest companies, based in New Annan.

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