Hydro provides electricity to all customers in Labrador and to rural communities on the Island. For Island customers, power is provided through an interconnected system which links many different power sources, working as one system to provide power to customers. Our teams operate a complex system of assets which all feed into this system, including generation from gas/combustion turbines and hydroelectric generating facilities, as well as extensive transmission and distribution assets which carry the generated power to homes and businesses.

So, when a Hydro customer in Main Brook or Burgeo, or a Newfoundland Power customer in St. John’s or Port aux Basques turns on their light switch, they are all being powered by generation assets across the province, including our facilities at Bay d’Espoir and Cat Arm and by power that flows over the Labrador Island Link, from Muskrat Falls.

Learn more about our fleet of generation assets.

Our system is monitored by the Newfoundland and Labrador System Operator (NLSO) – a part of Hydro –which is the heart of our provincial electrical system. In the NLSO, our system is monitored 24/7 by our team of highly trained System Operators who keep their finger on the pulse of our province’s electrical system, to ensure we have the supply to provide the power our customers need.

During extreme weather events, and especially in extremely cold temperatures, ensuring we are generating enough power to meet customer demands, becomes even more critical.

Colder temperatures mean higher demands on our system and under regular circumstances, our teams are able to manage our system to ensure the supply can meet the higher demands.

However, in extraordinary circumstances, like those we saw in January 2026, this can become even more challenging.

When frazil ice halted power generation at our Bay d’Espoir Hydroelectric Generating Station, 604 MW of power generation was unavailable during one of the coldest snaps of the winter. This 604 MW accounts for a large amount of the power we need to serve our customers on most colder, winter days.

Because our NLSO team always have their finger on the pulse, they could see that the predicted electricity demands on our system would become an issue without this power from Bay d’Espoir. As a result, they immediately worked with critical teams across the organization to activate our Advance Notification Protocol, which helps advise our customers of our provincial power supply status. This was critical to ensure customers were informed and able to prepare for any potential impact as our teams worked around the clock to ensure we wouldn’t require rolling outages.

The NLSO also quickly jumped into action and began coordinating with our Operations Teams to get all generation assets staffed and ready to go! From our major hydroelectric generating stations, like Hinds Lake, to gas turbines at Hardwoods and Stephenville, they ensured assets were online to best serve our customers.

The NLSO also worked closely with their counterparts from Newfoundland Power to ensure the system continued to operate reliably.  The NLSO also worked closely with neighbouring jurisdictions in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These relationships mean we can call on them for support when our system is in need. During this event, we received power from these neighbouring jurisdictions (and beyond) over the Maritime Link. This meant that we didn’t have to issue a Power Emergency which would include rolling power outages for the island. In turn, once we were in the clear and our Power Warning was lifted, we were able to provide Nova Scotia Power with 100MW of electricity to help them keep their customers online during their cold snap.

You can learn more about how teams across our organization work together when weather events threaten our system – read their stories here.

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Check out the other stories in this series:

Frazil Ice and our Power System: The trouble with frazil

Frazil Ice and the Power System: Keeping customers informed when it matters most

Frazil Ice and the Power System: The behind-the-scenes role of Energy Marketing and RPP