Almost 500,000 without power amid Hydro-Québec outages, service almost fully restored
Posted April 25, 2023 1:19 pm.
Last Updated April 25, 2023 4:50 pm.
Hydro-Québec says it’s working on restoring power to almost 500,000 customers on Tuesday – with the bulk in Montreal and the South Shore around noon, after a problem at the Churchill Falls generating station in Labrador.
By 2:30 p.m., the number dropped to around 43,000 customers without power, by 3:15 p.m. it was almost half of that, and at 4:45 p.m. just under 2,200 still affected – mainly Montreal.
“We are in a gradual recovery and the number of customers affected by the outages has already dropped significantly since the event began,” tweeted the utility around 2:41 p.m.
“The loss of production from certain turbine-generator units at the Churchill Falls power station triggered protection mechanisms on our high-voltage transmission network, causing a power outage affecting approximately 490,000 customers across Quebec,” they had said at 1:18 p.m.
They added that their teams are investigating the cause and they are “trying to restore service to affected customers by supplying them through other transmission lines.”
Hydro explaining that you do not have to report the outage via their website or mobile app, “that the deadlines estimated by the outages map are not applicable in an outage of this type since it does not involve repairs on our distribution network.”
Earlier this month, an ice storm hit the province, knocking out power to 1.1 million customers – some for as long as one week.
As well, the provincially-owned utility was hit two weeks ago with a cyberattack that knocked offline its website and mobile application, with a pro-Russian hacker group claiming responsibility.
See Hydro’s online tracker for more.
The loss of production from certain turbine-generator units at the Churchill Falls power station triggered protection mechanisms on our high-voltage transmission network, causing a power #outage affecting approximately 490,000 customers across Quebec.
Our teams are investigating…
— Hydro-Québec (@hydro_customer) April 25, 2023
