Mayor Dan Kutcher outlined Summerside council’s three main priorities for the coming year in his annual state-of-the-city address last week. CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin sits down with Kutcher to talk about those goals, and the latest on the city’s power struggles with Maritime Electric.
Summerside’s mayor says the city’s electricity challenges are far from resolved.
P.E.I.’s second-largest city, which operates its own utility, faced a series of power disruptions this winter.
Summerside Electric generates about 60 per cent of its electricity through renewable sources like solar and wind, but it still relies on Maritime Electric’s transmission grid for power that the smaller utility buys from New Brunswick.
A failure at Maritime Electric’s Sherbrooke substation, located just north of the city, led to significant power challenges in February. As a result, residents were asked to conserve electricity and a mobile transformer had to be brought in from Newfoundland to …