Large parts of Saskatchewan were hampered by power outages last week. Some areas had power restored quickly, while other customers were left in the dark for several hours. SaskPower has attributed the blame to weather-related causes, with heavy frost weighing down power lines as the main one.

With temperatures remaining cold and moisture persisting in the air, the risk of power outages still loom. SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry says they're working toward a fix for the future. 

"We're feeling pretty confident about things at this point, things are looking good and the sun is shining today. But, there is still frost out there. I was down in the Estevan area yesterday and there still was a lot of frost you could see on the lines and weighing down trees," Cherry said. "We're going to keep a close eye on that as we work toward making a permanent fix to our equipment. We're cautiously optimistic at this point."

SaskPower has apologized for the inconvenience and thanked customers for their patience with outages that sporadically lasted a few days. Following the major one on Tuesday, the city of Estevan went dark on Wednesday, with other smaller communities experiencing darkness into Thursday. 

The company has gotten to the bottom of what caused the Boundary Dam, Shand and Poplar River power stations to simultaneously shut down around 9:00 a.m on Tuesday. 

"In a nutshell though, basically the power stations had the power load there but it had nowhere to go, so they shut down," Cherry explained. "Those large transmission lines are high voltage lines that are carrying power away from the station to the customers were down. That was as a result of that heavy frost building up on those power lines."