Repeated outages cause tens of thousands of Hydro-Québec customers in Beauce to lose power

Tens of thousands of Hydro-Québec customers were without power in several sectors of Beauce due to a problem with a transmission line.

As of Thursday afternoon, the first outage, which affected about 95,000 customers, had been resolved in just over an hour.

A spokesperson for Hydro-Québec indicated the state-owned company had a problem with a transmission line that supplies distribution stations in the area.

And at the same time, the outage prevented French-speaking customers from contacting Hydro-Québec's Info-Pannes service, which is only available in English.

However, at 6:30 pm, a fresh outage this time left nearly 90,000 consumers without power in the same areas.

According to Hydro-Québec, areas from Saint-Marie to Saint-Georges and the United States border are without power. It was the same transmission line that “lost,” according to a spokesman.

“A protection mechanism trip on one of our high-voltage transmission lines is currently causing outages in the Chaudière-Appalaches region,” the state-owned company clarified in its X account.

Just before 10pm on Thursday, the majority of customers had power restored, with the latest outages mainly at MRC Les Appalaches.