Flickering lights are not caused by Algoma Steel’s new electric arc furnaces, because they currently don’t rely on PUC power, CEO Brewer says
Will PUC customers be compensated for the growing number of lengthy electrical outages in 2026?
“No,” says Rob Brewer, president and chief executive officer of PUC Services Inc., which manages electric and water distribution systems in Sault Ste. Marie and northeastern Ontario.
“As part of the connection agreement, there are times when then we can’t supply, but we obviously don’t charge them for the energy they don’t use right, so it’s the best we can do,” Brewer told city councillors at a recent meeting.
In 2025, PUC recorded its lowest number of significant electrical disruptions since 2013.
But this year, that number has been creeping upward.
“Yeah, so we’re trending not as good as 2025 but in line with where we were in ’23 and ’24,” Brewer said.
There’s been considerable speculation recently about the cause of those outages and also flickering lights reported by numerous homeowners.
Brewer says most of that was outside PUC’s control, originating instead with outside suppliers of electricity to PUC.
“I will say that with respect to outages, we’ve had four major outages this year that were related to supply from the transmission side,” Brewer said on July 13.
“Those are our four major ones. We don’t have control over the power as it gets to the distribution. We have control over when it does reach the distribution system.
“So what I would say to you is that there are other factors that are going into the majority of the issues that we have seen, and we’ve been working with Hydro One, our upstream transmitter, to try to better understand and improve that situation.
“I think they have come out publicly and said that in one of the cases, they had an employee who made a mistake. The end result of that mistake was our entire town went off.
“Well, that obviously isn’t acceptable from anybody in town, and it’s not acceptable to them. So we’re all working to make that better,” said Brewer.
And that about those flickering light bulbs?
“With respect to flickering, we had a number of concerns that date back now probably nine or 10 months. where we’ve been investigating the flickering.
“We had a third party install metres on our supply feed from the transmission system, and we were able to confirm, which we have publicly, that the flickering is starting from outside of PUC’s system and coming in, and so that is something we’re working with Hydro One to better understand.”
“I will say that we have seen less activity now that we’ve gotten more involved with what they’re doing, and I think there’s been a lot of speculation that it comes from Algoma or it comes from elsewhere, and I don’t think that’s something that, as a distributor, we have knowledge of or can pinpoint. But we’re certainly working with all involved to minimize it,” Brewer said,
“That being said, we have also had some outages within our system. We had some… for example, out in the Fort Creek area, and that was due to some underground infrastructure that we have that our our crews responded very quickly to.”
Are the outages or flickering lights possibly related to Algoma Steel’s power-hungry electric arc furnaces?
Brewer insisted Algoma’s electric arc furnaces are not currently relying on PUC electricity.