Hydro-Québec Announces Planned Power Outage for Montreal Neighborhoods
In response to recent electrical disruptions, Hydro-Québec has scheduled a temporary service interruption affecting more than 900 customers in the Côte-St-Luc and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce areas of Montreal. The utility company states this six-hour outage on Wednesday is necessary to stabilize the power network following a weekend of widespread blackouts.
Background: Transformer Failure Causes Major Outage
The planned disruption comes after a broken transformer at the Hampstead substation in Côte-St-Luc left approximately 15,000 Hydro-Québec customers without electricity on Saturday. While most customers had their power restored by Tuesday morning, with only about 50 outages remaining, the utility must now stabilize generators brought in to compensate for the damaged equipment.
"We will proceed with this service interruption to guarantee a more reliable supply until we change the transformer at the substation," explained Hydro-Québec spokesperson Pascal Poinlane on Tuesday. "Replacing a transformer takes several days. In the meantime, we have brought in about 10 generators. We have done several manoeuvres on the grid, but everything needs to be stabilized."
Details of the Planned Outage
The temporary power cut will specifically affect 926 of the 15,000 customers who experienced Saturday's outage. Hydro-Québec will contact these customers individually about the disruption, which is scheduled to run from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. This follows a similar but shorter outage on Tuesday that disconnected nearly 300 customers for approximately one to two hours.
Until the transformer can be fully repaired, Hydro-Québec is urging customers in both affected neighborhoods to conserve electricity during peak hours—specifically between 6-10 a.m. and 4-8 p.m.—to ensure the temporary generators can meet demand during cold weather conditions.
"We can reduce heating in unoccupied rooms and perhaps limit the use of high-energy appliances like washers, dryers and dishwashers during peak hours," Poinlane advised residents.
Municipal Response and Community Impact
Côte-St-Luc Mayor David Tordjman is actively encouraging residents to comply with Hydro-Québec's conservation requests. He revealed that nearly two dozen transformers had failed "due to a high level of demand immediately upon restoring of electricity."
"We're trying to sensitize our residents that they should limit their energy usage as much as possible," Tordjman stated. "By doing that, Hydro-Québec can get more power in a stable way to more residents."
The mayor met with Hydro-Québec executives on Tuesday to discuss what he called an "unacceptable" prolonged outage that left some residents without power for 55 to 60 hours. Tordjman expressed concerns about aging infrastructure and the need for better contingency planning to prevent similar situations in the future.
"People were out of power for 55, 60 hours. That's unacceptable for anybody in this climate," Tordjman emphasized, noting that some residents experienced water damage and even lost small pets during the extended outage.
Tragic Consequences and Investigation
During the weekend's power disruption, Montreal firefighters discovered the body of a 66-year-old woman in Montreal West during wellness checks on Sunday evening. The area had been without electricity since Saturday morning. Additionally, neighbors reported that an 87-year-old woman in N.D.G. died after being hospitalized following a wellness check on Sunday night.
Poinlane described these deaths as "sad news" but noted that Hydro-Québec has limited information about any connection to the power outage, stating that a coroner's investigation would provide more clarity.
Restoration Efforts and Challenges
When questioned about the restoration timeline, Poinlane defended Hydro-Québec's response: "Everything was really done as quickly as possible. We understand that this is a matter of essential services, in the middle of winter. Hydro-Québec had 400 workers who worked day and night over the weekend to find solutions, restart the substation and install generators. ... we did not limit resources."
The spokesperson explained that the equipment failure occurred "at the worst time of winter, because we were possibly in the coldest period of winter." Normally, the substation can operate with three of its four transformers, but the extreme cold created more serious complications, particularly for the approximately 2,000 customers whose outages extended beyond the weekend.
"Obviously, it wasn't ideal, but most customers were reconnected fairly quickly, given the scale of the outage," Poinlane acknowledged. "But it's true that for the remaining 2,000, it was much more complicated, unfortunately, and we acknowledge that."
The utility company continues to work toward full restoration while implementing temporary measures to maintain service reliability until permanent repairs can be completed.
