Over 4,500 Nova Scotia Power customers in the dark in large outage

Thousands of people on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore remain without power after an outage hit the area late Wednesday.

According to Nova Scotia Power’s online outage map, the outage affects more than 4,000 customers in communities in the Musquodoboit Harbour area.

The utility says the outage began just before 10 p.m. Wednesday.

There are few details on the cause of the outage other than a tweet by Nova Scotia Power that says crews are working to get equipment to fix damage that is “off road.”

The outage map says the utility estimates that power will be restored later today.

As a result of the outage, the Halifax Regional Centre for Education cancelled classes at three of its schools today — Eastern Shore District High, Gaetz Brook Junior High and Oyster Pond Academy.

Nova Scotia Power is currently asking the Nova Scotia Utilities and Review Board for a general rate hike of nearly 14 per cent over the next two years, however the provincial government is attempting to limit that increase.

Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton has said amendments to the Public Utilities Act would prevent the provincial regulator from approving an increase based on the utility’s costs, with the exceptions of fuel costs and those that improve the reliability of the grid.