The winter storm that hit Quebec in late December, knocking out power to thousands of Quebecers and causing strong winds, cost Hydro-Québec about $55 million. No fewer than 640,000 homes were left in the dark, with 1,200 workers deployed for 8 days.
The state-owned firm disclosed this in a preliminary report on Thursday morning, nearly a month after the rare intense storm, which was unstable from the morning of December 23 to December 25 with winds of 110 km per hour.
A total of 7530 failures were reported. At the height of the crisis, more than 380,000 Quebec homes were simultaneously plunged into darkness, particularly in the Outaouais, Laurentides and Capitale-Nationale regions. More than 500 electric poles and hundreds of transformers had to be replaced along with the installation of about sixty kilometers of electric cables.
The operation required huge manpower: 1,200 linemen performed 160,000 hours over 8 days. Hydro-Québec said “electricity was restored to 85% of homes” on December 26, 63 hours after the storm began. On December 27, 93 hours after the events, almost all households – 95% of them – had found power.
Moreover, the state-owned company noted that these tens of thousands of additional hours of work “have led to the postponement of work scheduled in the schedule and will lead to others in the coming weeks.” “Our staff will do everything possible to minimize delays,” it said.
Éric Fillion, executive vice-president of Hydro-Québec, recalled Thursday that his company had already “doubled down” its investments to reduce the chance of breakage during major events by cutting branches that could fall on wires. “Although these thousands of breakdowns are caused by abnormal weather conditions, we will continue our efforts in the future to control vegetation,” he assured.
15 lakhs less than in the month of May
Last May, Hydro-Québec cost Hydro-Québec about $70 million due to a more than 300 km long storm that hit Quebec and caused 11,254 outages in the province. The incident marks the most significant work on the province’s electrical network since the blizzard of 1998, 20 years ago.
Hydro-Québec spokeswoman Caroline des Rosiers said a December storm is “not that far off.” What explains the 15 million difference is that last May the storm front was mainly in three areas, which allowed outside contractors to be called in.
“There, in December, we couldn’t make an external call because it was all over Quebec, so we had to deal with our teams, which meant it could be cheaper. When we could, we called external teams even though we knew it would be expensive,” she explains.
In a statement, outgoing Hydro-Québec CEO Sophie Brochu, who will step down on April 11, argued Thursday that “the holiday season is without a doubt one of the worst times of the year to lose power.” “We knew that and that’s why we rolled up our sleeves and worked tirelessly until all the houses came back. Our linemen and women responded once again,” she said.
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