
A promotion outside the Visions Electronics location in downtown Kamloops promoting their air conditioner sales during high temperatures in the city/via Paul James
While not nearly as hot as it tends to get from time-to-time in the height of summer in Kamloops, BC Hydro says the unseasonably warm temperatures the past few days is the main culprit for power losses affecting various parts of the city since Sunday.
“Unfortunately, some of our equipment is not brand new,” noted Susan Edgell, BC Hydro spokesperson for the Kamloops area. “It’s not super old either, but the heat adds stress to our system.”
The utility’s version of heat stroke started on Sunday afternoon, when one of its systems controlling the power for a wide range of customers in the western sections of Kamloops became overwhelmed, killing power to nearly 2,500 BC Hydro customers in a stretch running from Tranquille on the north shore to the southern sections of Aberdeen and areas west of that line.
It came as temperatures in Kamloops were starting to hit 37 degrees through the afternoon on Sunday.

Map showing section of Tranquille in the 400 to 600 blk which went through a combined loss of power for over 24 hours from Sunday afternoon to late Monday afternoon/via BC Hydro
While first thoughts might suggest the BC Hydro grid gave in after being overwhelmed by the power demand to keep air conditioners running, Edgell says that isn’t the case.
“It’s not because people are overusing power right now,” she noted. “It’s just our system being tested.”
The roughly two-and-a-half-hour power loss across west Kamloops — which was fixed shortly after 5pm on Sunday — was the first in a series of power disruptions.
As BC Hydro was tending to the issues affecting the west Kamloops outage, another outage struck along the Tranquille corridor.
While much smaller in scale compared the first power interruption, which affected 2,467 customers in Kamloops, the issues along Tranquille were ultimately more challenging.

Online notification from one of the businesses affected by the Tranquille power outage on Monday/via Facebook
Power on the stretch from the 400 block to the 600 block of Tranquille began not long after the first outage started.
However, it took crews around 18 hours to figure out and fix the issue on portion of their system — or at least they thought they had.
Once crews flipped the switch and got power back on at around 1pm on Monday, about 15 minutes later, the system gave out again.
This led to another 5 or more-hour loss of power along that portion of Tranquille, meaning many of the 98 BC Hydro customers along the route — most of them commercial — ended up shuttered for the day.
During all that, another BC Hydro system would go down overnight, leaving 2,711 customers across parts of the north shore, downtown and lower Sahali without power for a couple of the overnight hours from around 4am to 6am, meaning most of the residential customers affected woke up not even noticing — save for the reset of their digital clocks.
As it turns out, those who didn’t reset in the early morning ended up saving themselves the effort, as that same system would give out just before 9am, shutting off power to the same 2,711 customers.
BC Hydro was able to restore power through that link in about 30 minutes.
“It’s the worst time to lose your power when it’s hot out,” noted Edgell. “These power outages are very challenging for residents, and we absolutely recognize that.”
“We want to thank our customers for their patience,” she added.
While temperatures in Kamloops are going to remain unseasonably hot through Tuesday and Wednesday, BC Hydro is suggesting there’s no need to worry about a system-wide failure.
“I think we can be very confident moving forward that our crews are doing everything they can to ensure that the lights stay on and that we can keep Kamloops residents cool this summer.”