During the cold weather in early February, more than 1,100 customers lost power
Officials in western Quebec’s Pontiac region say they will keep pushing Hydro-Québec to find a long-term solution to ongoing hydro problems. This is because an outage in early February during a brutal cold snap left hundreds of customers without power.
People in L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, Chichester, and Sheenboro were without power for more than 30 hours on February 4 and 5.
During that time, it got as cold as nearly -40 C. At the peak of the outages, more than 1,100 people couldn’t turn on their lights. Some of them also didn’t have phones or internet.
“Our citizens are quite angry, I’ve got to say,” said L’Isle-aux-Allumettes Mayor Corey Spence.
“To stay warm, people had to spend the night in their cars.” “They lost their jobs and had to pay for generators.”
Politicians in the area say that Upper Pontiac’s power situation has been bad for a long time.
Its system is at the end of Hydro-Network Québec’s line, and since the area is so close to the Ontario border, its power system is synchronized with Ontario’s.
It can also be synchronized with the electricity network in Quebec, but Spence says Hydro-Québec has told him that the situation in Ontario is more stable.
Hydro-Québec also buys power from the generating stations at Waltham and Chutes-Coulonge, which are owned by the company Evolugen.
It says that it has answers
Spence and other people from the area met with Hydro-Québec last week to talk about what’s been done to make sure something like what happened in February doesn’t happen again.
In a March 1 news release, the power company said that the early February outage was caused by “events” on Ontario’s power grid that it couldn’t explain and that it couldn’t get to either the Waltham or Chute-Coulonge stations.
At the same time, Quebec was using a lot of electricity because it was so cold, so they couldn’t get power there either.
To stay warm, people had to spend the night in their cars.– L’Isle-aux-AllumettesCorey Spence is mayor.
Hydro-Québec said it now has a plan to send power from Quebec to the sector if there is a problem on the Ontario side.
It also said that it had added connections to allow power from generators in case of a blackout and raised the limit on one of the lines so that more power could be sent.
The power company has also promised to speed up how quickly it can fix the problem so that power can be restored more quickly.
A lack of fait
Spence said he was cautiously optimistic after the meeting.
He said, “I’d like to work with Hydro-Québec to make sure our network is strong.” “But at the same time, I will fight for my citizens to make sure they get what they deserve.”
The Liberal MNA for Pontiac, André Fortin, said he will also keep pushing for better service.
He said, “I’m still asking for the Upper Pontiac to be connected to the rest of the Hydro-Québec grid so they can get the same level of service as everyone else in the province.” “I think the local officials are doing the same.”
“People in the community are traumatized when things like this happen.” At this point, they don’t really trust Hydro-Québec.
In the coming months, Hydro-Québec and the people in charge of the area will meet again.