Wind damage cuts power to nearly half of Waterbury’s GMP customers

March 14, 2025 | By Lisa Scagliotti

Wind damage to electric transmission equipment in Waterbury Center led to a power outage Tuesday night that had more than 1,500 customers in the dark for several hours. 

The GMP Outage Center map shows the outage area in Waterbury. Screenshot

Just before 6 p.m., high winds damaged equipment on the transmission line serving Waterbury Center, according to Green Mountain Power Communications Director Kristin Kelly.

The utility’s online outage center information indicated that approximately 47% of the company’s Waterbury customers were affected. 

“Crews restored 644 customers in two hours and 15 minutes and the remaining 904 customers in four hours and 29 minutes,” Kelly said. 

In addition to the Waterbury customers affected, the incident impacted homes and businesses in nearby Stowe.

Jackie Pratt, general manager at Stowe Electric Department, said the Green Mountain Power event had a “domino effect” on her company’s power distribution. The networks are connected and when the neighboring substation was affected, equipment on the system in Stowe failed to work as it should to react to the disruption, Pratt said. As a result, Pratt said a section of the Stowe transmission went down, causing what the company described as “widespread outages” along the Mountain Road.

“We got it turned back on pretty quickly on our end,” she said. “We were back up before 8 p.m.” The Stowe equipment issue has been addressed since to ensure it would work properly under similar circumstances in the future, Pratt added. 

Pratt also addressed speculation on social media during the outage as some local residents discussed whether the disruption in their power service could have been connected somehow to news about tariffs between the United States and Canada. Public comments by officials in Ontario, Canada, suggested that Canadian electric power producers may cut their supply to U.S. utility customers in response to new U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods and services.

According to state regulators, Vermont receives one-quarter of its electric power from Canada. However, Pratt noted that Vermont utilities purchase electricity from Hydro Quebec located in the province of Quebec. In 2024, Stowe Electric for example, received approximately 21% of its electricity from Hydro Quebec, she said.

Read more from Stowe Electric here about the tariff issue as it relates to Vermont electric utilities.