Overloaded power grid blamed for west-end power outage

Hydro Ottawa said Thursday’s major power outage in the west-end was caused by an overload on the city’s power grid.

The outages caused more than 8,500 homes and businesses to lose power. The utility said on Twitter, power sub-stations were overloaded and they suspect that was because of the increased use of air-conditioning, during the extreme heat that day.

“We are re-routing loads to other stations, so homes are being restored as their area load is redistributed, but we have to do them in succession,” said Hydro Ottawa in a tweet. “It is confirmed that it is an overload; we can only speculate about the reason, but increased AC use is likely.”

Power was fully restored to the area Thursday night.