On Monday morning, a power outage affected over 120,000 households in Quebec, as reported by Hydro-Quebec. The areas most heavily impacted by the blackouts were the Quebec City and Eastern Townships regions, where more than 62,000 and nearly 40,000 customers, respectively, experienced a loss of electricity. Additionally, Monteregie saw around 17,000 customers without power, Chaudière-Appalaches reported over 12,000 affected customers, while Mauricie and the Centre-du-Québec region faced outages affecting nearly 6,000 and more than 7,000 customers, respectively.
In the early hours of the morning, the utility commenced an inventory of resources in regions untouched by the recent outages, such as Montreal and the Montérégie. The objective was to mobilize these resources to support recovery efforts in the affected areas. This initiative follows Hydro-Québec’s unveiling of its Action Plan 2035 earlier this month. President and CEO Michael Sabia outlined the state-owned company’s ambitious plan to invest $90 to $110 billion in the next 12 years. The focus is on increasing generating capacity and enhancing the transmission network. A substantial portion, between $45 and $50 billion, is earmarked for bolstering infrastructure reliability, with the utility anticipating a 35% reduction in outage frequency over the next seven to 10 years.
In a bid to enhance service quality, Hydro-Québec is set to implement a series of improvements to its distribution network. The utility company aims to introduce cutting-edge equipment, including composite poles and conductor protectors, while also embracing practices such as the strategic placement of power lines underground for increased efficiency and reliability.
