How one raccoon shut down the power — and why new smart grid couldn't do much about it

A raccoon that disrupted the power last night for thousands of people in Sault Ste. Marie — and lived to tell the tale — did so by interfering with one of PUC's two transmission stations.

PUC's website said the power outage was reported at approximately 9:17 p.m on Thursday and impacted almost 10,000 customers. Impacted neighbourhoods included the downtown core, the P Patch, Fort Creek and Hiawatha Highlands.

Reached on Friday, PUC communications coordinator Jairus Patterson said there are two transmission stations in Sault Ste. Marie. Roughly 30 per cent of the city was affected by the interference from the small mammal at one of those stations.

"A raccoon managed to get into the station and climbed on top of the transformer and came into contact with the transformer leads," said Patterson. "For safety reasons, the power automatically turns off."

All PUC assets are fenced off to keep members of the public out, Patterson said.

"It is difficult, however, to always keep wildlife out, like raccoons, birds, squirrels, etc.," he said.

In November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the Sault to officially cut the ribbon on the $34-million Sault Smart Grid, the country's first-ever community-wide smart grid system. 

PUC has championed the project, promising it will result in annual costs savings for residential customers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the reliability of the electrical system. 

"This includes shorter power outages and fewer customers being impacted when outages occur," the PUC said. The YouTube video below explains the smart grid in more detail.

Not surprisingly, last night's outage sparked plenty of social media chatter, with some locals wondering why the smart grid didn't kick into action.

Patterson explained that wildlife interference is much more common at the distribution level, and in those cases, the PUC's smart grid technology would have more of an impact mitigating the number of customers affected.

"With the outage being caused at the source of our power [transmission station], there was not an opportunity for Sault Smart Grid to redirect power during the outage as the whole circuit was out," he said. "Our crews isolated the affected equipment, and then restored power within an hour."

Electricity Canada says squirrels are the cause of most animal outages in a service area, followed by raccoons and birds.

Last month, a raccoon caused an outage in downtown Toronto that resulted in the power being disrupted for 7,000 customers downtown (in that incident, the animal did not survive). All told, raccoons were responsible for at least 13 power outages in Toronto in 2023.

Another aspect of the smart grid did work as intended last night, Patterson said: it immediately notified crews and the public of the outage.

PUC workers found the raccoon suspected to have caused the outage alive, if a little frazzled, near the scene.

"So we found the cause of the outage," PUC reported on its Facebook page last night. "This little guy came into contact with one of our transformers. Crews found him hiding out, no doubt in shock. Crews report the outage is repaired and the raccoon is safe and sound."