Wood Pole Maintenance Program

We’re extending the life of our power poles. This is part of our annual maintenance program. We’re:

• inspecting poles
• treating poles
• replacing poles

Why we’re doing it

This work helps extend the life of the poles from 30 to 35 years to more than 60 years! It’ll also saves money. How? Well it costs less than $50 per pole to maintain a power pole. But replacing a pole costs $2,500 on average.

This work will also:

• increase safety for our employees and customers
• continue to provide reliable power across the province

Our progress so far

We’re in year seven of this 10 year project. In 2019, our plan is to have our crews:

• inspect 113,000 wood power poles
• replace 1,500 wood power poles

We’ll be on the lookout for signs of:

• decay
• carpenter ant infestation
• damage

This way we can take care of any issues right away. Which will delay the poles replacement in the future.

Minimizing the impact to you

We’ll stay within the right-of-way as much as we can. But sometimes our crews may need access to your property to perform the work. If this happens, we’ll make sure we’re respectful of our surroundings.

Respecting the local environment

Extending the life of our power poles helps to make sure they don’t end up in the landfill. That and we’re saving a tree while lowering the impact to the environment.

Benefits to local communities

This work allows us to lower the life cycle costs of power poles. The estimated cost of the project in 2019 is $10 million. $6.2 million on replacements and $4.1 million on inspections and maintenance.

Keeping you informed

You may see us doing inspections and maintenance in:

• Unity and area (May to August)
• Kipling and area (May to August)
• City of Moose Jaw (August)
• Lumsden and area (August)
• City of Prince Albert and area (August to mid-September)
• Nipawin and area (September to October)

Construction crews will also be carrying out replacements throughout the year in:

• Weyburn
• Saskatoon and area
• Sturgis
• Regina and area
• Moosomin
• Meadow Lake
• Strasbourg
• Davidson

To meet your needs, our crews may work outside of these dates. We do our best to lower the impact for customers and agriculture operations.