PowerStream, an electricity distributor jointly owned by the cities of Vaughan, Markham and Barrie, last week opened the first new transformer constructed in its service territory since 2002. The facility, named the Robert Fabro Transformer Station after a long-serving employee of PowerStream's predecessor company, Markham Hydro, will have enough capacity to serve 40,000 homes.
According to information supplied by Powerstream spokesperson Eric Fagan, the company owns 11 such facilities, more "transmission grid direct-connect transformer stations than any other municipally owned electricity distribution company in Ontario," and is the second-largest municipally owned electricity distributor in the province.
Fagan says that the company serves roughly 325,000 consumers now, and is consistently adding roughly 6,000-8,000 new customers per year. He chalks the growth up to a combination of the large-scale development taking place in the area north of Toronto served by the company and to an aggressive program that attracts condo building owners by offering to retrofit their properties with individual-unit metering.
Currently, the company employs 500 staff. And while Fagan says they attempt to keep human resources costs low in order to deliver better prices to consumers, the company is often hiring to accommodate the constant growth. In particular, he says, attempting to meet load reduction targets mandated by provincial authorities next year will mean substantial hiring in the conservation department of the company.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Eric Fagan, Director of Corporate Communications, PowerStream
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