Thousands of Hydro customers were without power in Montreal amid heat wave

Thousands of Montrealers, mainly in the city’s western portion, were without power on Thursday afternoon.

At the height of the outage, almost 200,000 homes were off the grid, amid the ongoing heat wave – and by 6:15 p.m. that number dropped to just over 10,000.

Hydro-Québec tweeting at 3:39 p.m. that, “the tripping of a protection mechanism on one of our high voltage transmission lines is currently causing outages in the West Island of the city.”

The most affected areas being Côte-Des-Neiges-NDG, Saint-Laurent, Côte-Saint-Luc, Hampstead, Kirkland, Mont-Royal, Beaconsfield, and Pointe-Claire.

“Our teams are mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible.”

Just after 4 p.m., Hydro tweeting: “Voltage recovery on the affected high-voltage line is in progress. We will soon be able to begin restoring service in the affected neighbourhoods. The majority of affected customers should be back in service by late afternoon or early evening. The analysis continues to find out the exact cause of the trip.”

Montreal-Trudeau Airport also alerting passengers on social media, writing, “some operations…are disrupted due to a major electrical failure. We are sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.” And at 4:30 p.m. writing, “gradual resumption of operations, but some systems remain affected, please check your flight schedule.”

Le déclenchement d'un mécanisme de protection sur une de nos lignes de transport à haute tension cause présentement des #pannes dans l'ouest de l'île de @MTL_Ville. Les secteurs les plus touchés sont @CDN_NDG, @ArrSaintLaurent, @CoteSaintLuc, @hampsteadqc, @kirkland_de, @SP_VMR,…

— Hydro-Québec (@hydroquebec) July 6, 2023

To check the status of power outages, click here.

On June 1, 250,000 customers across the province were also left without power when protective mechanisms were triggered on the network. Smoke from forest fires and heat were to blame.