Service back after nearly 500,000 Hydro-Qubec customers lose power

Hydro-Qubec is gradually resolving outages around the province after nearly 500,000 customers were without power on Tuesday.

As of 7 p.m., the number of people without service was around 1,200. There are about 400 clients in Montreal without power and about 500 in the Saguenay. Almost everyone in the Montrgie, which was hardest hit, has their electricity back.

Earlier in the day, there was a large number of outages in and around Montreal and Quebec City.

Earlier this month, an ice storm knocked out power for more than one million customers.

A spokesperson for Hydro-Qubecsaid there was a "loss of production" from turbo generators at the generating station in Churchill Falls, N.L., which led to automatic shutdowns on the network.

"The network's protection mechanisms reacted correctly, which led to the outages," said spokesperson Cendrix Bouchard.

In a tweet, Newfoundland Labrador Hydro, the primary power generator for that province,corroborated Hydro-Qubec's explanation.

"During maintenance this afternoon, an issue at Churchill Falls resulted in a loss of supply affecting customers in Quebec," the tweet read. "All units are back online,"

Hydro-Qubecalso said it is investigating the reasons behind Tuesday's failure.

It also saidcustomers do not need to signal outages through the Info-pannes service.