High voltage

Rick Frazer likes pretty much anything with power surging through it. Such as the remote power lines he’s done emergency repairs on. Or the model planes he builds and flies for fun. Or all the positive energy bouncing around at the events he’s organized for Scouts Canada.

In 1971, Rick earned an Honours Diploma in Electrical Technology from the Northern College of Applied Arts and Technology in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Since then, he has accumulated extensive experience in the high voltage power industry.

His background includes project management of major capital projects, team leadership and crew supervision, as well as hands-on experience in station design, commissioning, maintenance and troubleshooting. He has commissioned all types of equipment in transmission, distribution and generation, and is an expert on modern protection and control, SCADA and communications systems.

Among some of Rick’s career highlights is the time he led a team of eight to get a critical power supply back up after sudden failure. Within 16 hours of getting the call, the team had modified protections, metering systems and high-voltage connections using cables from a mobile unit substation, and connected a second transformer winding to carry the load of the failed one. This arrangement was used for about a year until a new transformer was obtained and a new switchyard built to replace the aging one. For its efforts, the team was awarded the Ontario Hydro President’s Award for Customer Excellence. A lot of Rick’s stories involve teams and you’ll hear him say ‘we’ more often than ‘I’.

Rick is a seasoned manager of people and projects, as well as a widely respected mentor and teacher – bridging the gap between traditional mechanical technologies and emerging digital ones. And he has an expert knowledge of both. Rick is one of those people who doesn’t just keep the electricity on line, but helps keep the industry on track.

He’s had a tremendous impact since joining our team in 2005. He designed a protection system to be used temporarily while oil circuit breakers were being replaced – without removing the line from service – with SF6 breakers. He also designed all the modifications required for the project, then coordinated and executed the field commissioning work. He led a design team to produce the protection and control for the addition of bus tie breakers, capacitor banks and a 115/34-kV switchyard with three feeders, as well as the relocation of three 115-kV circuits in an existing 115-kV switchyard. He has designed protection upgrades, from electromechanical relay protections to modern numerical based protection systems, complete with new power line carrier facilities. He provided the design specifications of the overhead line connection for new cogeneration facilities to existing substations, along with protection design advice for these facilities. And he recently directed commissioning testing on a Hatch Energy-designed substation, complete with commissioning reports.

You could say we’ve been keeping him busy.

Outside of work, Rick has been involved with radio-controlled aircraft for 30 years, holding several club executive positions and working at the 2002 World Scale competition in Tillsonburg, Ontario. He’s also a 16-year volunteer with Scouts Canada, twice reviving struggling Cub Packs with improved programs. He organized the 1986 Ontario Provincial Cub Car Rally for approximately 60 Cubs from across the province and has provided leadership training for Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers at both the district and regional levels.

Rick’s been happily married for 35 years and has two children. One is an electrical engineer and the other a medical radiation technology student. So they’ve obviously inherited some of dad’s surging genes.

For further information, please contact:

Rick Frazer
Senior Technical Specialist
Hatch Energy, Oakville, ON
905-469-3400 ext. 3194
RFrazer@hatchenergy.com