Hydro-Québec 2023: worst power outages in 15 years
Posted April 29, 2024 12:08 pm.
In 2023, Hydro-Québec customers spent an average of nearly 17 hours without electricity, which is three hours more than in 2022.
According to documents submitted to the Régie de l’énergie by Hydro‐Québec last week, TVA Nouvelles reports that Hydro customers spent an average of almost 17 hours (1,008 minutes) without electricity, compared to 13.7 hours (821 minutes) in 2022 and around 5.5 hours (346 minutes) in 2021.
The power company claims that numerous forest fires in Abitibi, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, the Côte-Nord and the Nord-du-Québec are responsible for many these service interruptions.
The ice storm and violent winds in April 2023, as well as the thunderstorms in July, which left 392,000 customers without power at the height of the storm, are also to blame according to Hydro-Québec.
Throughout Quebec, Montérégie suffered the most outages in 2023.
According to documents sent by Hydro-Québec, Montérégie residents had 15,135 breakdowns last year.
The Laurentides region comes in second with 8,268 outages, followed by Montreal (7,357 outages) and the Capitale-Nationale region (6,919 outages).
They want to reduce the number of outages by 35 per cent within seven to 10 years and spend up to $50 billion in the coming years to improve the situation.
According to Hydro-Québec, 40 to 70 per cent of the breakdowns are caused by vegetation that contacts the equipment.
The power company concludes that the Quebec government will have to accept a lower dividend from Hydro-Québec in the next few years or mandate significant increases in electricity rates.
