SaskPower will be inspecting more than 113 thousand wooden poles this year. It will cost about $10 million to inspect, repair or replace poles. Inspections will be carried out in the Unity, Kipling, Lumsden, Nipawin, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert areas. Tim Eckel is the Vice-President of Asset Management, Planning and Sustainability. He says, “This is the seventh year of a 10-year cycle that will ultimately see all of our 1.2 million wood power poles inspected.” Repairing, nearly doubles the life of the poles and saves the company a lot of money. Eckel says it costs, on average, 50 times more to replace a pole that to maintain it. The work will get underway on May 6th and will continue until the end of October. The company says there will be no power outages during the work.