The Westbourne and Macdonald areas will have electrical service interrupted Tuesday morning as Manitoba Hydro performs planned maintenance.

The crown corporation says in a release at approximately 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, an outage will start affecting the communities of Westbourne and Macdonald, and anywhere in a 16-km radius of Westbourne. It's expected to last one hour and will affect approximately 250 customers.

"This is so we can do some critical maintenance that we have to do at our Westbourne station," says Manitoba Hydro public affairs officer Bruce Owens. "The outage is required because we can't work on energized equipment to do this (job). We have to take the station out of service so our staff can do this as quickly as possible and as safely as possible."

"If we don't do this maintenance, the risk is that we have a sudden, unplanned outage, and of course that takes a lot longer to fix."

Major hydro customers and critical customers have been pre-notified of the outage, Owens says, and residents should be mindful of the impact an early morning outage could have on a daily routine.

"I know in my own circumstances, sometimes when there is an outage very early in the morning, my alarm clock doesn't go off," Owens reminds.

Click here for more information on how to prepare for an outage.