Saturday morning's hydro vault fire at the Finch station caused significant damage - so much so that it took until late Sunday afternoon to reconnect the last of the 35,000 customers that were affected.
The power restoration, that came through different source channels, put a strain on the entire grid because the main transformer - needed to supply the power to those homes - needed a great deal of repair.
As a result, those who lost power early Saturday morning but then got it back, lost it again for several hours on Sunday, as Toronto Hydro spokesperson Tori Gass told NEWSTALK1010 Sunday morning.
" These are going to be proactive ones. We need to do that because we're seeing some overloading on the system because of the amount of rerouting we've had to do."
Gass adds this is a measure that had to be taken despite the best efforts of Toronto Hydro and Hydro One to try an rectify the problem as efficiently as possible.
"This is not an ideal situation. It's something we've been trying to avoid this entire time. But considering the length that it's taking to make the repairs at the Hydro One station just due to the amount of damage that's been done there, we are now seeing some strain on the grid."
The area of Finch and Islington became the first casualty of the controlled shutdowns and had no power for about five hours. Toronto Hydro then said there was a rolling blackout that impacted the Finch and Weston Road area mid-afternoon Sunday. Gass confirmed the areas impacted by these outages were those that had their power returned the fastest on Saturday morning.
But just before 5 p.m., Hydro One tweeted the following:
We have made repairs and power is now available from our Finch transmission station for @TorontoHydro. It will take some time, but the process to restore normal service to customers can now begin. We thank everyone for their patience.
— Hydro One (@HydroOne) July 29, 2018
Toronto Hydro then confirmed all power had been restored to all customers impacted by the vault fire Saturday morning.
- With files from Jackie Rosen