SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It was serious enough to consider rolling power outages to ensure homes and businesses didn't freeze in the -40 C temperatures, but fortunately - for Yellowknife at least - NWT Power Corporation was able to get the generators back up and running in under three hours Friday.

"We were ready to light the fuse on rotating outages if this problem continued," said Power Corp. spokesperson Mike Bradshaw. "But we didn't have to do that."

Power went out in Yellowknife, Ndilo, Dettah and Behchoko at around 11:12 a.m., Bradshaw said electricity was restored to some parts of Yellowknife within 45 minutes but a series of glitches prevented power from returning elsewhere until the corporation was sure a stable load could be maintained.

Power wasn't fully restored in Yellowknife - Latham Island was last - until about 1:40 p.m. Behchoko was still without power as of 3:30 p.m.

The problem began with either a malfunctioning generator or a power generating problem at the hydro gate at Power Corp.'s Bluefish facility on the Yellowknife River 30 km north of the city, said Bradshaw.

It cascaded from there, he said. When the company tried starting up diesel generators at the Jackfish Lake power plant a fuse blew on one of the main generators. Then the company lost power production at its hydro facility on the Snare River.

"When things are unstable, (the generators) tend to protect themselves and shut down," said Bradshaw.

He said rotating power outages would have been considered if power generation remained an issue to ensure portions of the city without power didn't freeze.

With temperatures reaching -40 C, the Power Corp. was expecting power consumption to reach 32 to 34 megawatts Friday night, while the company has a capacity to produce 40 to 42 megawatts. Summertime usage is usually around 18 megawatts, said Bradshaw.

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