HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s private power utility says its automatic billing system that was disrupted by a cyberattack almost a year ago should be back to normal next month.

Since the attack on Nova Scotia Power in March 2025, some customers have reportedly received bills up to three times higher than the same period the year before. The utility has said it was forced to estimate the electricity bills of some of its customers because its meters were not able to transmit usage data to the company.

Chris Lanteigne, the company’s director of customer care, told reporters Friday that 400,000 meters, about 75 per cent of the total, were transmitting accurate data to the utility by the end of January. He said the rest of the 530,000 meters should be back online by the end of March.

“We know over the course of the last 10 months that we’ve had to estimate a lot of bills and we know that that has contributed to confusion. We do apologize to our customers for that,” Lanteigne said.

A Russia-based actor executed a ransomware attack on the Emera Inc.-owned utility’s systems, accessing the personal and financial data of 280,000 ratepayers. Nova Scotia Power has said it became aware of the incident in April. CEO Peter Gregg told a legislative committee in November that there’s evidence the perpetrator was on a U.S. sanctions list of Russian actors and that the firm did not pay a ransom.

Politicians have reported that some of their constituents’ power bills have spiked since the attack, and Premier Tim Houston has criticized the utility over inflated bills and reports of consecutive charges within short periods. The premier wrote to the Nova Scotia Energy Board in December saying that “knowingly overbilling would constitute regulatory fraud and misreporting revenue to the markets is a form of securities fraud.”

Nova Scotia Power has previously denied those allegations. Utility officials said Friday that the system estimates bills based on “warm” months and “cold” months. They said November marked the start of cold month estimates, causing a sudden spike in projected bills instead of the gradual increase customers would usually see as temperatures dip through the fall.

Nova Scotia Power says it has hired 100 people to visit homes and businesses to read power meters since the attack.

Lanteigne says about 84 per cent of customer bills in January had an accurate reading and customers with incorrect invoices have been able to snap a photo of their meter and send it in for review. He says the utility has not been charging interest or penalties on unpaid bills and will give customers notice before that resumes. Lanteigne says customers will be able to split any outstanding balances equally over future bills, avoiding a large lump sum payment.

“That means that that amount remains interest-free and they’ll have predictable payments every month moving forward,” he said.

Nova Scotia Power says the number of unpaid bills usually goes up in the winter when cold temperatures increase heating costs. It says four per cent of customers are usually behind on their payments, but the number has doubled to nearly eight per cent this year.

The provincial energy board and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada have both opened investigations into the cyberattack. The privacy commissioner’s office said this week it’s aiming to finalize its review in the coming months.

The power utility has proposed residential rate increases of about eight per cent by next year. If approved, the first 3.8 per cent increase would be effective retroactive to Jan. 1, and the second 4.1 per cent hike would come into effect Jan. 1, 2027.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2026.

Devin Stevens, The Canadian Press