Hydro-québec customers lose power for hours

More than 85,000 Hydro-Québec customers across the province lost power between 4 and 5 p.m. Thursday afternoon after an unexplained incident on the transmission network near the de la Verendrye power station in the Laurentians.

Power went out shortly after 4 p.m. for more than 50,000 customers on the island of Montreal, a further 25,000 in the Laurentians and about 10,000 in the Montérégie. HydroQuébec spokeswoman Ariane Connor could not give details on which parts of Montreal were affected, but Twitter users indicated problems in downtown Montreal, the StLaurent borough and the Plateau Mont Royal districts.

The incident, which has not yet been explained, affected the 735 kilovolt line at the de la Verendrye transformation station near Ste-Adèle.

“Since this incident was on the transmission network, as opposed to the distribution network, it affects a lot more customers, but once the problem is resolved, we can reestablish service to many more customers much faster,” Connor said.

By 6 p.m., the vast majority of customers had power again, and those who remained in the dark were quickly being brought back on line.

“We regret the inconvenience this has caused our customers and we are working hard to bring the system back to normal,” Connor said, adding the utility is still investigating the cause of the outage.