Larry Christie, a spokesman for Saskatchewan's government-run power utility SaskPower, didn't know how many people were without power. But he did say that large portions of Regina, Yorkton, Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and North Battleford were affected.

There was little impact in Saskatoon and initial reports of outages in Manitoba and Alberta appeared unfounded.

The outage happened at about 4:30 a.m. local time. Some areas had the power back on quickly while others took longer.

Christie said it could take as long as six hours from the original outage for everyone to be back online. By 8 a.m. the utility had restored 75 percent of its generating capacity.

Even though Saskatchewan generates its own power, a major disruption in the U.S. can still have effects north of the border, Christie said.

"It's just like the Internet for power companies these days. We're all connected. We move power back and forth and that shock travelled all the way up the system," he said.

"When it hit Saskatchewan here, the computers said that something is going on and it started to trip units and reduce load."