Nearly 500K Hydro-Quebec customers lose power, service largely restored

Most lights in Que. back on after massive outage Hydro-Quebec says it's investigating what caused nearly 500K people in the province to lose power on Tuesday.

Hydro-Quebec says it is investigating a "loss of production" on its power grid Tuesday, which caused widespread blackouts across the province.

Nearly half a million customers lost power at the height of the outage during the early afternoon. Of the 498,000 customers who lost electricity, more than 140,000 were on the Island of Montreal. Other hard-hit areas were the Montérégie region, the Laurentians and Laval.

Power was starting to come back for some customers shortly after the outages started, though many still do not have electricity.

Hydro-Quebec spokesperson Caroline Desrosiers said the Crown corporation does not yet know what caused the power grid to fail, but teams are looking into it.

In a tweet, Hydro-Quebec said the loss of production happened at the Churchill Falls power station, which triggered a protective mechanism to cut power.

"Please note that you do not have to report the outage via the Info-pannes service and that the estimated delays by Info-pannes are not applicable in this type of outage since there is no work to be done on the distribution network," the tweet said.

Newfoundland and Labrador power serivce NLHydro also tweeted, saying, "During maintenance this afternoon, an issue at Churchill Falls resulted in a loss of supply affecting customers in Quebec. All units are back online. The incident is under investigation."

As of 3:30 p.m., there were less than 20,000 clients without electricity, including 18,500 in the Montérégie, and just 375 in Montreal.

LISTEN ON CJAD 800 RADIO: Hydro-Quebec provides update on flash outages across the province