Residents in Amherst, Nova Scotia, lost power on January 14, 2026, after a safety switch (a high-voltage breaker) on a transmission line in Memramcook, New Brunswick, opened (tripped). The breaker isolates faults on the 345 kV intertie, and when it opened it severed the primary electrical intertie between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which triggered protective shutdowns on Nova Scotia Power’s system and caused the local outage.
The sudden loss of electricity caused disruptions across the community, including the cancellation of the January 15, 2026, performance of “We Remember” at the Amherst Theatre. While service was largely restored within 24 hours, Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin, the Independent MLA for Cumberland North, has publicly asked Nova Scotia Power for details on why the system tripped and for a timeline for upgrades.
According to Nova Scotia Power, these safety switches are designed to trip automatically to prevent wider systemic damage or cascading outages when they detect a fault or imbalance. The town of Amherst is particularly vulnerable to these issues because it sits at the end of the interprovincial line where power enters from New Brunswick.
To help prevent these types of outages in the future, Nova Scotia Power is working on a $20-million reliability project in the Amherst area. That work includes added redundancy — such as additional lines — so that a single failure on the intertie will not leave the entire town in the dark.
