March 05, 2007

Washington County Outage Reinforces Need for Reliability Projects

Bangor, ME--Bangor Hydro-Electric Company customers in Washington County were without power for about 15 minutes this morning. The outage occurred at 7:01 a.m. when the transmission line feeding the Down East area was switched over to another transmission line to allow scheduled repairs to begin.

The outage affected 11,189 customers initially. Approximately 1,175 customers in the Eastport area were restored after just a few minutes. Power was restored to all customers at 7:16 a.m. Scheduled repairs will be completed at a later date once alternative approaches to the problem have been fully investigated.

The Down East area has been served by just one transmission line for many years. When the line goes out, all Bangor Hydro customers in the Washington County area lose electric service. Bangor Hydro recently began the Down East Reliability Project, which would provide another line to that area and would prevent this type of outage in the future. The line would connect Ellsworth and Harrington. The project is in its early stages, but if all goes as planned it would be complete by 2010.

Bangor Hydro is also currently working on the Hancock County Reliability Project, which would improve service to Hancock County, allow for growth in that area and support peak load during the summer months. This project will build a transmission line from Ellsworth to Trenton. It is expected to be complete in 2008.

These projects are just a couple examples of how Bangor Hydro is working to provide the best possible service to its customers.

Bangor Hydro-Electric Company (BHE) is an electric utility wholly-owned by Emera Inc. BHE serves a population of 192,000 in an area encompassing 5,275 square miles in eastern and east coastal Maine. BHE is a member of the New England Power Pool and is interconnected with other New England utilities to the south and with the New Brunswick Power Corp. to the north. Visit us at www.bhe.com.

Emera Inc. (EMA-TSX) is an energy and services company with $4.0 billion in assets. Electricity is Emera's core business. The company has two wholly-owned regulated electric utility subsidiaries, Nova Scotia Power Inc. and Bangor Hydro-Electric Company, which together serve 590,000 customers. Emera's other investments include a joint venture interest in Bear Swamp, a 600 megawatt pumped storage hydro-electric facility in northern Massachusetts; a 12.9% interest in the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline ; and Emera Energy Services which manages energy assets on behalf of third parties and provides related services. Visit Emera on the web at www.emera.com.