By Ali Al-Rumaih, The-14
July 6, 2023
Large portions of western Montreal are currently experiencing a widespread power outage, impacting over 198,000 customers across 169 separate outages. The power outage started around 2:35 PM.
The rest of the province is not facing widespread outages. According to Hydro-Quebec, the outage is caused by “equipment failure,” and service restoration is expected by 4:30 p.m.
During a day when many Montreal residents are relying on air conditioning and fans to beat the heat, power outages have occurred. The temperatures in Montreal are soaring to 33 degrees Celsius, which, coupled with the humidity, will make it feel like 40 degrees Celsius.
At 4 p.m., Hydro-Québec reported about 220,000 customers without power in the province. Approximately 200,000 of those customers were in Montreal, the vast majority of them west of Décarie Blvd.
By 4:35 p.m., there were 135,000 people without power in Montreal, and nearly 145,000 in all of Quebec.
We have been reestablishing power gradually over the past 20 minutes,
Hydro-Québec spokesperson Pierre-Alexandre Buisson
We remind clients affected by power failures to unplug their energy-consuming appliances in preparation for their service to return, in order to avoid a surcharge on the network.
Hydro-Québec spokesperson Pierre-Alexandre Buisson
The outages were caused by “the tripping of a protection mechanism on one of our high voltage transmission lines,” Buisson explained.
The breaker automatically shut down the Saraguay station, located in the St-Laurent borough. Buisson said Hydro-Québec teams were investigating the cause of the outage and that power would be restored gradually to most users within one to two hours after the cause is determined.
“Usually when there’s an outage on a transmission line, we don’t send a ton of teams to the scene, and it is usually resolved quickly.”
When questioned about the potential cause of the outage, specifically if it could be attributed to a high demand for air conditioning units amid the hot weather, Buisson acknowledged that it was one of the potential factors under consideration.
“It’s not excluded,” Buisson said.
The power outage had an impact on the operations of flights at Montréal-Trudeau airport, which tweeted that “some operations at Montreal-Trudeau Airport are disrupted due to a major electrical failure,” while thanking people for their patience.
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