‘Dig Safe Month’, a provincial-wide initiative, that began on Sunday, April 1.

The campaign aims to promote safety and reduce damages to underground infrastructure by raising awareness of safe digging practices, which includes calling ‘Ontario One Call’ before beginning a project that involves breaking ground.

Planning an outdoor project?

Call before you dig.

Are you planning on doing any work that involves digging such as installing a pool, building a fence or planting a tree? As a homeowner, contractor, or developer, it is your responsibility to ensure that any outside projects are carried out safely.  It is important that you get utility locates before you start your project to avoid damaging any underground infrastructure.

Underground networks of services including power lines might be buried on your property. Accidentally hitting one can cause injury, property damage and inconvenient outages.  To make your project safe:

  1. Call 1-800-400-2255 or visit Ontario One Call before digging
  2. Wait for an Oshawa Power cable locator to arrive and mark the area
  3. Respect the marks; avoid digging within one metre of marked ground
  4. Dig with care

Please allow for five business days for your locates to be complete before you plan to dig.

It’s the Law.

Having utilities located before you dig is required by law under the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act (see Construction Projects 228).

For additional important information, visit the Ontario One Call website.

On behalf of Oshawa Power we would like to extend our thanks to the community for their patience this week as the wind storm passed through the city of Oshawa. Although we did have some small isolated power outages, restoration was quick, and our problems were minor. Prevention programs and updating infrastructure is key to our reliability.

Oshawa Power takes reliability very seriously, and is constantly looking for improvements. Our team considers Oshawa’s projected growth and existing infrastructure and makes the plan to replace or rebuild system components before it causes problems for our community. The extensive maintenance programs put in place by Oshawa Power have also resulted in an overall increased reliability. These programs include:  ongoing tree trimming, pole testing, annual switch maintenance, annual infrared scanning, cable replacement, annual oil testing and relay and breaker testing to minimize external issues, as well as daily observations while crews are working. In addition to these preventative measures, our Emergency Preparedness Plan deals with mobilizing and dispatching crews and resources to respond quickly and efficiently when a problem arises.

Our everyday job is to ensure Oshawa has safe, reliable power, communicate with our ratepayers and do it as cost efficiently as possible.  It is storms like this week that challenge our efforts and we are happy to report that we continued to deliver the same service that Oshawa ratepayers have come to rely on.

 

Ivano Labricciosa

President and CEO

Oshawa Power

We are proud to announce that Oshawa Power is the winner of EDA’s 2017 Environmental Excellence Award for our work in the Solar Energy Management Systems Pilot Project.  The SEMS pilot project has been extremely successful and is bringing our industry invaluable information that will help shape energy solutions for the future.  As we enter into the next phase of this pilot it is an honour to have the hard work and dedication to bringing our customers innovative solutions be recognized by our industry.

Oshawa Power Earth Hour Results – 2018

Around the world Earth Hour symbolizes international unity on the importance of addressing climate change.  In Oshawa, electricity users went dark to observe Earth Hour over the weekend.

This year Oshawa Power recognized a drop in electricity consumption of 0.6% or 835.4kW.  Oshawa has always been a leading community in energy conservation initiatives and continues to look for opportunities to increase their commitment to climate change awareness.  Oshawa’s electricity users work hard every year to reduce their electricity consumption.  In the last 3 years Oshawa has saved over 45 GWh of electricity through reduction and conservation programs, our users have adopted Earth Hour habits for everyday living.

The amount of electricity saved during this year’s Earth Hour is equivalent to the CO2  emissions of 2,451 kms driven and the amount of the CO2 sequestered by planting 160 new trees in Oshawa.

Please be advised that the billing delay has been remedied and the regular billing schedule has been restored.  We appreciate your patience in this matter.

Some customers affected by billing delay

Please be advised, electricity invoices for customers who normally receive their monthly bills between the 16th and 31st will be delayed for January.  We fully expect to have the situation remedied very soon and all January bills are expected to be delivered no later than February 8th.  Affected customers will receive invoices for only the delayed billing period however, due to the delay, some of those customers may receive two invoices in the month of February. Overdue service charges will be waived and there will be no interruption of service resulting for a period of time to accommodate the billing delays. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Oshawa Power strives to bring the best customer service to our customers.  As we plan and improve the overall customer service currently offered we would like to hear from you about your experience.  We actively use feedback to constantly improve our delivery and provide you with the best possible service.  So we can provide you an even better experience we are collecting feedback on how we performed in your contact with us.

Oshawa Power has introduced a Customer Service Satisfaction (CSAT) survey that integrates with our telephone system.  In your next phone call to us you will be offered an opportunity to answer a quick 2 question survey at the end of the call which provides us immediate feedback.  Your feedback will let us know areas that we are excelling and areas that we need development.  We encourage you to use this service and help us to deliver the best customer service.

Thank you

Oshawa Power

Customer Service Team

Oshawa Power is proud to be this year’s winner of Hexagon SI’s 2018 Safety and Infrastructure’s Innovation Award for our Outage Management system.

Oshawa Power’s Outage Management System connects existing utility technology AMI, SCADA, CIS and GIS to identify outages, predict outages,  and communicate outages.  With the focus on improving reliability, reducing outage times and improving customer communications our team along with Hexagon’s collaborated together to provide the customers of Oshawa with better service and reliability.  Part of this project is deploying Intelligent Switches, sectionalizing areas with defective equipment and restoring as many customers in many cases before 1 minute.  Oshawa Power uses real data from AMI meter outage messages (outage/restore) timestamps as our benchmark for when the outage starts and ends.

This is a significant achievement, crew response time improved, dramatic increases in our reliability, notification from our OMS was accurate, and communicating the outages to our outage map, IVR system and social media was seamless all as a result of good engineering and system network analysis.

In 2017 we sent out approximately 250 tweets with power outage details and our social media audience grew 27% and 18% for Facebook and Twitter respectively as a result of informative outage notification posts.   The predictive dialer called 42,000 customers in 2017 to inform them of power outages in their area.

Historically only 5%-10% of total outages would be planned.  Planned outages are mainly to perform infrastructure maintenance and preventative upgrades to avoid any unplanned outages.  Planned outages are preferred as the utility can plan their resources in a more efficient manner and the outage duration is kept to a minimum.  Unplanned outages are time consuming as crews with the assistance of Operations have to patrol first to identify location and cause of the outage before being able to repair.  In 2017 with the OMS fully functional we reported to have 61% planned outages and with the accuracy of the system unplanned outage duration was drastically reduced with the elimination of patrolling since the system can direct the crews to the device causing the outage.

These achievements were not done by investing in new technology platforms but by utilizing existing platforms and resources available and make them work for us to improve service and reliability for the customers of Oshawa.   Currently we are the only utility that automatically dispatches crews based on the OMS without the involvement of an operator.  This allows us to deliver more to our customers for the same cost. Oshawa Power is proud to be leading the industry with forward-thinking, customer-focused approaches!

About Hexagon
Hexagon is a leading global provider of information technologies that drive productivity and quality across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications.  Hexagon’s solutions integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information. They are used in a broad range of vital industries.

 

Weigh in on Oshawa’s Smart Cities Challenge for a chance to win an iPad!

The development of the City of Oshawa’s Smart Cities Challenge bid is underway and needs your insight!

Complete the survey for the chance to win an iPad!

We’re looking to you to help identify community needs and how Oshawa can harness digital technology and data to improve livability.

Complete the survey before 4:30 p.m. eastern time on February 2, 2018 for your chance to win a 32 Gb iPad (must be 18 years of age or older).

Complete the survey now! *

Open House – February 1

You’re invited to an Open House to learn more about the Smart Cities Challenge and share your ideas about community needs and possible projects.

  • Date: Thursday, February 1
  • Time: 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (presentation at 7:15 p.m.)
  • Location: C-Wing Committee Room at City Hall (50 Centre St. S.).

Can’t make it but want to have your say?

Share your feedback online on Connect Oshawa or on paper (available at Service Oshawa and all OSCC branches) by Friday, February 2 at 4:30 p.m. EST.

* Must be 18 years of age or older to enter. Only 1 entry per person. One prize of a 32 Gb iPad with WiFi capabilities (silver) will be awarded by random draw. No purchase necessary. Visit www.oshawa.ca/scc for full prizing details and conditions.

Some customers affected by billing delay

Please be advised, electricity invoices for customers who normally receive their monthly bills between the 16th and 31st will be delayed for January.  We fully expect to have the situation remedied very soon and all January bills are expected to be delivered no later than February 8th.  Affected customers will receive invoices for only the delayed billing period however, due to the delay, some of those customers may receive two invoices in the month of February. Overdue service charges will be waived and there will be no interruption of service resulting for a period of time to accommodate the billing delays. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Oshawa area Text Message Smishing scam

Oshawa Power has received reports in our Customer Service department that some local customers have received fraudulent text messages claiming to be sent by Oshawa Power.  These text messages claim there is a refund for you and instruct you to click on a link to provide personal information.  Oshawa Power does not send out refunds using text message or email communication.  Oshawa Power also does not solicit for private information over these channels.  If you have any question please do not hesitate to contact us at 905-723-4623 or email us at contact us .

Phishing

This is a type of identity theft where criminals use email to try to bait you into fake or hoax websites. Once there, you are asked to disclose confidential financial and personal information, like passwords, credit card numbers, access codes or Social Insurance Numbers.

Emails tend to look authentic, featuring corporate logos and layouts similar to the ones used by institutions for legitimate communication. Because these emails can look so official, unsuspecting recipients may reply to them, resulting in financial losses, identity theft and other fraudulent activity.

Smishing

Scam artists have also found a way to send fraudulent messages to mobile phones. Smishing is similar to phishing, except that it is received via text message or SMS (Short Message Service).

Keep in mind all the points mentioned above when speaking about phishing. The intention behind text message phishing is the same as regular email phishing and the content and tone of the message is very similar.

Vishing

The term comes from “voice” and “phishing”. Vishing uses telephone communications in combination with email or the Internet to steal information and money from unsuspecting consumers. There are a few different methods con artists use. Typically you are contacted by either a recorded phone message or by email and directed to call a phone number or go to a website to enter personal information.

Always remember that Oshawa Power will never send you unsolicited emails or SMS messages asking for confidential information, such as your passwords, credit card and account numbers or personal identification numbers.