Electrical parts shortages stall power reconnections

HALIFAX - Homeowners making fruitless visits to the electrical department of home stores aren’t the only ones frustrated by their lack of purchasing power.

Electricians in Halifax are also facing shortages of the parts they need to deal with the high demand for their services.

“We were in a bad state before the hurricane for material shortages, all over the place. Trying to get certain things right now is very, very difficult, from meter sockets to generator components, anything to do with backup power, there’s a lot of shortages on those items right now,” said Brian MacEwen, manager at Expert Electric in Dartmouth.

Another electric company owner said that, for example, there are zero meter bases available locally.

“People are driving to Moncton to buy stuff like that,” said the businessman, who didn’t want to give his name.

MacEwen said his company, which employs 15 certified Red Seal electricians and eight apprentices, spent the days late last week making sure guys were available to come in as needed, and securing what materials could be found “to be as ready as we could.”

“Service masts and the meter sockets themselves, and of course wire for the services going up the side of a house,” are among the now precious items. “A service mast is the part that goes up and contains the wires inside. A certified electrician has to repair those. The linemen from Nova Scotia Power are responsible for the overhead line that attaches to your house, and that’s where their responsibility stops.”

MacEwen said if a service mast that has blown down is in good condition and just has to be put back up, an electrician can complete that job in an hour or two.

“If it’s a matter of rebuilding the entire service, it could be half a day to a day,” he said. “We don’t go around and knock on doors and ask if they want us to fix their service; there’s a lot of other people that are doing that. We concentrate on our regular clients. I had everybody concentrate our efforts on storm (related work) on Monday so that we could go back to regular work, because we’re already crazy busy, as most people are.”

Expert Electric workers have pretty much wrapped up on storm duties, though they are still fixing pumps that don’t work when the power comes back on.

“And I’ve got services that are sitting on buildings, ready to be reconnected but they’re connected by Nova Scotia Power because those guys are so beyond busy, I would want nothing to do with what they have to do right now,” said MacEwen, who gives full marks to the guys in the field, but had nothing to say about the people running Nova Scotia Power that was fit to print.