Customer connections process improvements

We're working towards more timely and efficient connections

We have an important role to play in meeting the province's electrification goals and our ability to connect new customers quickly and efficiently is an important part in this.

We complete around 27,000 electrical connections each year that don't require design work and we have very fast connection times for these, averaging seven days once permits are received. The delays we're currently experiencing are with more complex projects that require the work of our designers. We complete around 4,800 of these types of connections each year.

The delays are a result of several factors, including having an unprecedented number of these highly complex connection requests at a time when we're also experiencing staffing challenges.

An update on the improvements we're making

We're actively working on a number of changes to our procedures and policies to help expedite the process for new customer connections. We'll provide regular updates on our progress.

See the process improvements overview document [PDF, 217KB] we prepared in February 2023 to update various organizations and partners.  

Staffing increases

We've increased our design and customer connections staff by over 50. These individuals are located in local offices across the province. We're also reallocating and re-focusing staff from other areas of the company to support our customer connections team.

New customer intake process

We're working to improve our customer intake process to provide more consistency in how we onboard new customers and ensure we're getting the necessary project information more efficiently.

We recently completed a pilot project to test this new intake process and incorporated learnings from customers, consultants and contractors. We'll be rolling it out province-wide by the end of March 2023. Experienced customers and contractors who are familiar with the process and the project information requirements will move through the intake process quickly without additional wait times.

Updates to our standards

We're making a few updates to our standards to make it easier for customers to progress their project and source materials. One of these changes is to the ES54 Section S service standards. Included in this update is a new standard S0-05 General Notes, Service Ducts and Trenches, which aligns our gravel specification on private properties with the BC Electrical Code. See technical standards and guides.

Policy changes

We're looking at potential changes to our extension policy to simplify the process and help to make project costs more predictable. There's more to come on this as we incorporate feedback we've received from customers and various associations.

We'll provide more information on these proposed changes in the near future and there will be opportunities for you to share your input.