About 11,000 Hydro-Québec Customers Still Without Power One Week After Winter Storm

A gas station is shown without power in Montreal, Dec. 24, 2022, following a winter storm in the region. The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes

Hydro-Québec says more than 10,700 customers are still without power a week after a major winter storm knocked out transmission lines across the province.

The utility says the power is still out for more than 3,300 customers in the Quebec City area, about 2,800 clients in the Laurentians region, and for roughly 1,200 customers in the Outaouais region.

Hydro-Québec has said it couldn’t provide an end date for all the outages.

The storm that brought wind, freezing rain and snow hit Quebec on Dec. 23, and at its height knocked out power for more than 350,000 customers.

Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier at Polytechnique Montréal, said Wednesday that the lengthy outages are a sign that Quebec’s grid is fragile and that the province is unprepared for its shift away from fossil fuels.

An auditor general’s report in December found that Hydro-Québec’s service has become less reliable and that the provincial Crown corporation isn’t fully equipped to handle the challenges associated with an aging grid.