Hydro-Quebec used a never-before-tried technique to protect the grid during Wednesday’s ice storm

Hydro-Quebec said during Wednesday's ice storm, it used a brand new technique to protect the electrical grid.

Hydro-Quebec CEO Claudine Bouchard says Wednesday’s storm, while disruptive, was far more manageable than the devastating April 2023 event that knocked out power to more than one million customers in the province.

The major difference, she explained, was location.

In 2023, the heart of the storm was concentrated in Montreal, which covered streets with damaged trees, blocking emergency vehicles and making repairs in dense urban neighbourhoods slow and difficult.

This week’s system spread across a much wider territory, which made the work easier, explained Bouchard at a news conference Thursday.

“It’s much easier to work across a large territory than to be concentrated on streets in Montreal where there are damaged homes, cars to move, and emergency services that need to get through,” Bouchard said.

The storm also prompted what Hydro-Quebec says was a historic first: a preventive de-icing operation on a 735,000-volt high-voltage transmission line in the Quebec City region Wednesday night.

Using a device called a de-icer, crews sent a high-intensity current through the line to heat it and shed the ice buildup before it could cause damage. It’s a technique the utility says had never before been used during an active ice storm.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault, also on hand at the news conference, credited the temporary closure of several road sections near the line for helping crews carry out the delicate operation safely.

At its peak, more than 200,000 clients lost power in the province, but by 4 p.m., that number had dropped to 63,000.

Roughly 2,000 workers with Hydro-Québec are repairing distribution lines across the province, and the majority of outages should be resolved by 11 p.m.

Storm was more or less what was expected

In an interview on Thursday, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) said the ice storm unfolded as expected, with about 20 to 30 millimetres of precipitation in the affected areas. ECCC meteorologist Giselle Dookhie said that with freezing rain, it’s the accumulation of impacts throughout the day that can be dangerous.

“The afternoon, evening commute, that was more icy. We had an ice accumulation on the ground already. We had water hydroplaning on some of the highways,” she said.

“I was very grateful that we didn’t have a lot of vehicles on the road at that time, because it made the commute a lot more manageable.”

However, the overnight period saw a lot more ice accumulation on tree branches, which became heavy and, with the strong winds, started to break off and hit power lines.

“So we did have a number of power outages as a result of the impacts of the freezing rain that we saw during the day,” Dookhie noted.

Although the ice storm began early Wednesday morning, around 5 a.m., ECCC said it was mostly intermittent for most of the morning and into the afternoon. Overall, Montreal got 20 millimetres of precipitation, while Lanaudière and Laurentides saw 25 to 35 millimetres because the storm was a little further north then originally forcast.

“Thankfully, all the preventative measures that were put in place, like the extra salts on the roads, the abrasives that we saw, it really did help to make a big difference, and we’re grateful that there’s not a lot of accidents that happened,” Dookhie said.

“In terms of the impacts, a lot of people stayed home, which made the situation a lot more easier to manage. If people were out on the road it probably would have led to a different outcome.”

With files from The Canadian Press