100,000 Montreal homes in the dark at peak, as bitter cold persists; Hydro restoring power gradually
Posted January 21, 2025 9:01 am.
Last Updated January 21, 2025 5:42 pm.
A power outage affected roughly 100,000 homes in Montreal at its height on Tuesday morning, amid the bitter cold. By 9 a.m. over 50,000 Hydro customers were still in the dark.
Those living from St-Laurent, to just before Pie-IX, and Bellechasse to Henri-Bourassa – in Ahuntsic, Villeray, Rosemont, and more are off the grid.
The outage began at 6:30 a.m., due to an equipment failure at a substation, which the utility says was caused by over usage of the grid – as the extremely cold weather continues. “The breakdown of a transformer at Charland substation is causing a power outage in Montreal,” explained Lynn St-Laurent, spokesperson from Hydro-Québec.
“Our crews are on site to restore service by transferring the load to other transformers. This is being done gradually, so as not to create an overload with the high demand for electricity due to the cold weather, which would lead to further outages. Service will therefore be restored gradually over the next few hours.”
As of 11:00 a.m., under 20,000 customers were still without power. And by 2:40 p.m. the number was down to 4,665 homes.
“Woke up early in the morning, no electricity, no light, couldn’t take a shower, couldn’t see anything. So I went back to bed,” said Montrealer Geneviève Riou.

St-Laurent said Hydro reached maximum demand of electricity this morning at 38,960 mega watts. “We’re also expecting high demand later today, between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., as well as tomorrow which will bring once again very cold temperatures.” Around 42,000 mega watts are expected to be used.
Hydro Québec adds that residential customers can help lower the consumption on the system during peak demand periods.
“So it’s helpful when folks reduce their thermostat maybe one to two degrees in rooms that they might not be using during peak hours,” St-Laurent said. “We’re not asking folks to do this all day, but between 6 and 9 a.m. in the morning, between 4 and 8 p.m. in the evening, reducing by one to two degrees makes a big difference for the system.”
Collège Reine-Marie on St-Michel Boulevard had to send their students home after power was still out in the area and affecting their school.
A teacher at Georges-Vanier school says the school board took too long deciding whether to close or stay open.
“We waited for the CSDM (Centre de services scolaire de Montréal) to bring the decision to close the school, but they didn’t want to,” science teacher Dominique Paquin said. “So we brought the kids in the classrooms and the CO2 level is supposed to be like 1,200 the maximum you can get, and a lot of classrooms were to like 1,500 till like 2,000s. So the kids were like seeing white dots and hard to breathe, and the same thing for the teachers.
“We just wait, wait, wait, wait for the decision from the CSDM, and finally they came for a decision (to close the school).”
The outage posed obstacles for workers in the area as well. Villeray resident Sunjay Mathuria said that he had to commute to work after the lack of power made it too cold to work from home.
“I literally can’t stay at home,” Mathuria said. “So unfortunately, I have to make the trek downtown now.”
Businesses have also been immobilized with the lack of electricity. Celia Steib, assistant optometrist at Uvée optometry clinic, said that they are unable to take any appointments due to a lack of internet.
“We’ve already had to cancel our first two appointments,” Steib said. “It’s a shame, because if there are emergencies, we can’t take them.”
“We have been completely in the dark since 6 a.m. this morning.”
At the start of the outages – Hydro was able to restore power for many customers at a distance – but crews continue to work on location as well.
“What our teams at our control centre did for the following minutes and went in about a half hour, about an hour, we were able to restore the power back to tens of thousands of homes at a distance,” St-Laurent explained.
Once electricity is completely restored Hydro-Québec advises customers to restore power gradually throughout their home – to also avoid overcharging the grid.
As of around 1:45 p.m., power was restored to most of the affected areas in Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension, according to the Hydro-Québec website.
You can track the power outage here.
–With files from Zach Cheung