Hydro-Québec substation that caused power outage needs to be replaced, says Côte Saint-Luc mayor

Getting the Hydro-Québec substation that serves three Montreal neighbourhoods upgraded is “critical” to preventing more power outages, says the mayor of Côte Saint-Luc.

A breaker failure at the Hampstead substation, which is scheduled to be upgraded in 2029, left thousands of Montrealers in the dark and without heat during a weekend deep freeze.

READ: Montreal snowfall warning: power outages, schools closed, REM slowdown

The substation serves residents of Côte Saint-Luc, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Hampstead.

“The infrastructure there is old,” said Côte Saint-Luc Mayor David Tordjman. “Should have been replaced a lot sooner. We know that Hydro-Québec recognizes that.

“It’s not acceptable to have power outages either this frequently and for this long.”

During the peak of the outage on Saturday morning, about 15,000 Montreal households were without power. The Côte Saint-Luc and the NDG neighbourhoods were particularly hit.

“One of the four transformers is not working anymore,” said Hydro spokesperson Pascal Poinlane. “We have to replace it and it’s going to take a few days now. So the substation is working, but it’s not working 100 per cent. It’s working about at 75 per cent. “What we did is we adapted temporary solutions. For instance, we added about 10 generators to make sure that we can give the power to all our customers.”

As of Tuesday morning, some 50 customers remained without electricity.

“We are confident that all will be restored over the next few hours,” Hydro-Québec wrote in a notice on its website Tuesday. The utility asked customers to reduce their electricity consumption to help ease the pressure on the grid.

No electricity — again

Among those without power on Tuesday were Judith and Noam Azerad, a mother and son living on Rand Avenue near Guelph Road.

“My heart sank because I was really hoping to come home today and get my life back to normal,” Judith Azerad told CityNews.

“It’s pretty awful,” Noam added. “We’re used to cold weather. We’re not used to the power going out like this for three days. I don’t remember experiencing a power outage for this long ever. It’s kind of ridiculous.”

They were without electricity for nearly three full days — power went out Saturday morning and only came back Monday night. But the lights were off again Tuesday morning at 7:17 a.m. — a new outage affecting 13 homes. Power was expected to return by 3 p.m.

“It’s really mainly not knowing when it’s coming back and what to do,” Judith said. “And what’s gonna happen with our food, which by now, it’s not gonna be good. It’s really the unknown.”

Judith adds there’s very little information available on Hydro-Québec’s “outages” page about this latest power outage, contributing to the feeling of frustration.

“It’s very vague, but I guess that’s because they themselves are looking to find the problem and fix it, and the solution to that problem.”

Noam also blamed the Crown utility for a lack of communication, while praising the response from the City of Côte Saint-Luc.

“Hydro was not very communicative with the residents,” he said. “It was really the city that was telling us what was happening. And they were pretty good. They had the library open late Saturday night. They had the aquatic centre open. They were offering food and hot drinks and just places with electricity. That was really nice of them.”

Mayor Tordjman confirms the city declared a state of emergency “early on.”

“We ensured that our residents that needed a place to come, to stay warm, to recharge their phones and to communicate with us was available, and I was there personally throughout,” he said.

‘We can’t wait four years’

Hydro-Québec announced it would be temporarily cutting power to about 900 customers in Côte Saint-Luc and NDG between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday to strengthen the grid to ensure better service while the broken transformer at the Hampstead substation is being replaced.

“It’s a major work that we are proceeding right now,” Poinlane explained. “We are changing some transformers on the street. You’re going to see workers working hard to make sure that the reliability of the grid is improved.”

Mayor Tordjman says Hydro-Québec is promising that contingency plans will be implemented to ensure similar outages don’t happen over the next few years – before the substation gets upgraded. Those plans would include backup systems and generators.

“We’re going to make sure that things are done sooner than later,” Tordjman said. “That way we can just ensure the safety of our residents.

“We can’t wait four years.”

Upgrading the Hamstead substation, which will be renamed the Côte Saint‑Luc substation to reflect its actual location, is part of a larger Hydro-Québec project to upgrade the power transmission system between the Saraguay substation in Saint‑Laurent and the Aqueduc substation in LaSalle.

The large-scale project, which Hydro-Québec says is designed to “meet the growing energy demand in Montreal’s west end,” will convert the existing transmission line from 120 kilovolts to 315 kilovolts.