About 17,000 customers were without power Monday morning after Hydro One equipment failed.

At 5:15 a.m. roughly 11,000 Hydro Ottawa customers in the east and south of Ottawa lost power while about 6,000 Hydro One customers were affected, according to media spokespeople from both utilities.

By 6:30 a.m. Hydro Ottawa was able to restore power to 2,000 customers, Hydro Ottawa spokesperson Susan Barnett said, noting the outage was caused by a loss of supply on the provincial transmission grid.

The provincial transmission grid, she explained, provides power to utilities across the province.

Crews from both Ottawa and the provincial hydro companies have been working to fix the transformer on Hawthorne Road where the equipment broke, Hydro One spokesperson Daniele Gauvin indicated, adding the utility expects to have power restored by noon.

Barnett, meanwhile, indicated power would likely be restored in stages started at 12:30, with the hope of having everyone back online by 2 p.m.

The public and Catholic school boards had closed a number of rural schools in the morning due to the outage. The public board, however, sent students home at eight suburban schools just before 11 a.m. Buses were sent to Carson Grove Elementary School, Colonel By Secondary School, Emily Carr Middle School, Glen Ogilvie Public School, Henry Munro Middle School, Le Phare Elementary School, Norman Johnston Secondary Alternate Program, and Robert Hopkins Public School. The public board expects classes to resume as usual on Tuesday, April 21.