A Tuesday morning mistake made by Saskatoon Light & Power has left 27 houses temporarily without power and busted appliances.

According to Trevor Bell, director of Saskatoon Light & Power, city crews were upgrading a transformer on one of the wooden poles backing the 400 block of Whitney and Montreal Avenues.

"While we were doing our work, an error was made and we installed the wrong transformer which provided a higher voltage than normal to the residence," explained Bell.

"We weren't aware of that until we had actually energized the line and quickly realized that there was a problem so we turned everything off, de-energized it and then we started dealing with customers one-on-one to get their power back up again."

Homes face problems with major appliances

He said this mix-up was an extremely rare occurrence and hasn't happened in many years.

"Residents do have a couple of options available to them. They can deal with the city directly — we have an adjuster on site right now who is meeting with people, itemizing the losses and starting that process — [or] people can also go through their home insurance if they want to do that," he said.

According to Bell, many of the houses faced furnace problems as well as problems with major appliances, including fridges, stoves, microwaves, and garage door openers. He said many of these things will need to be repaired or replaced.

"We really sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this is causing customers," he said.

"Unfortunately, we can't undo what's happened but we are looking into what caused that and trying to find out how to improve our process in the future so it doesn't happen again."