Toronto Hydro is reviewing its automated alert system after issuing another incorrect outage notification — the second false report in just over a week.
Early Monday morning, Toronto Hydro’s official X account posted that approximately 1,243 customer addresses in the Parkdale–High Park area were experiencing a power outage. But the utility’s own outage map showed no disruption anywhere in the neighbourhood.
⚠️ OUTAGE ALERT: A power outage is affecting parts of Ward 4 – Parkdale-High Park, impacting approximately 1,243 customer addresses. For real-time updates and estimated restoration times, visit our outage map: https://t.co/z1PpU5sRUONote: This is an automated alert.
CityNews contacted Toronto Hydro to clarify the discrepancy. In a statement, the utility confirmed the alert was incorrect.
“We’ve looked into this on our electricity system and have not identified an outage of that scale in the area at the time the automated alert was issued,” Toronto Hydro said. “It appears the social media alert may have been triggered by a technical issue, and we’re reviewing to determine what occurred.”
The incident mirrors a similar false outage report issued last week for Etobicoke North (Ward 1), where Toronto Hydro posted an alert about a large outage that did not appear on its outage map and was later confirmed to be inaccurate.
“This automated outage alert was triggered in error due to a technical issue. We apologize for the confusion and any inconvenience this may have caused,” the March 9 post reads.
Both errors occurred after Toronto Hydro transitioned from manually posted outage alerts to an automated notification system designed to push updates more quickly and consistently.
Toronto Hydro says it is now investigating the cause of the false alerts and assessing whether adjustments or safeguards are needed to prevent further errors.