Over the weekend, parts of Montreal faced a blackout caused by a faulty transformer, leaving residents of Côte Saint-Luc, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, and Hampstead in darkness and cold during a deep freeze. The outage affected around 15,000 households, with some still without power two days later. To address the issue, a new transformer has arrived at the Hampstead substation, located in Côte Saint-Luc, to replace the broken one and restore electricity.
Hydro-Québec took temporary measures, including adding generators, to alleviate the strain on the network until the new transformer’s arrival. Although about 900 households experienced another brief power outage for grid strengthening, the replacement process is underway. The Hampstead substation is set for a full upgrade by 2029 as part of a larger project by Hydro-Québec to enhance the power transmission system in the city’s west end, meeting the increasing energy demands of the area.
