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Damage to Hydro One transmission line creates widespread outage

March 15, 2006 - About 40,000 Hydro Ottawa customers and 25,000 Hydro One customers had their power interrupted at 8:35 a.m. today. Approximately two thirds of the affected customers had their power restored shortly after 9:00 a.m., and the remaining customers were restored before 10:30 a.m.

The outage occurred as a result of residential construction activity in the Kanata area. During the course of construction, a piece of construction equipment commonly known as a "blasting mat" damaged one of Hydro One's high-voltage 115,000 volt lines on Klondike Road.

Hydro One customers affected were principally in the Winchester and Arnprior areas.

Hydro One's high-voltage system has built-in back-up or "redundancy" so that if one line serving an area is interrupted, electrical load can be transferred immediately to another line with minimal customer impact. In this case, some equipment at Hydro One's Merivale Transformer Station in Nepean had been taken out of service for planned maintenance which resulted in the affected area being served by only a single supply line.

Power was restored after the damaged section of line was isolated, which allowed the rest of the line to be returned to service. Repairs are underway on the damaged section of line.

Hydro One delivers electricity safely, reliably and responsibly to homes and businesses across the province of Ontario and owns and operates Ontario's 28,400 kilometre high-voltage transmission network that delivers electricity to large industrial customers and municipal utilities, and a 122,000 kilometre low-voltage distribution system that serves about 1.2 million end-use customers and smaller municipal utilities in the province. Hydro One is wholly owned by the Ontario Government.

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For more information and to make arrangements for photography, contact Hydro One Media Relations 24 hours a day at 1-877-506-7584 (toll-free in Ontario only) or 416-345-6868. Our Web site is www.HydroOne.com.