Southern Saskatchewan hit by massive blackout

- Much of Saskatchewan was left in the dark, without power early in the morning of September 18 thanks to a storm in the United States that disrupted transmission lines.

The widespread power outage happened around 4 a.m. By 10 a.m. power to most regions had been restored, said Larry Christie, a spokesman for SaskPower, the government-run utility provider.

“Electrical system instability” created by the storm in the midwestern U.S. caused the generating units at two power stations in Saskatchewan and several other transmission facilities in locations across the province to go offline, said Christie. The SaskPower system is connected to the same power grid as the one affected by the storm in the U.S.

Christie couldnÂ’t estimate how many customers were affected by the power outage but confirmed it hit large portions of Regina, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Yorkton, Prince Albert and many rural areas. Most residents in Saskatoon were spared, Christie said.

“We continue to work to try to understand what took place here in Saskatchewan and whether or not everything functioned perfectly,” said Christie.

SaskPower serves more than 441,000 customers and operates about 154,269 km of power transmission lines.