Power corp investigating delays in restoring power

Daniel Campbell
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 30, 2013

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife is back on hydro power today after the territory's electricity supplier was forced to run diesel generators for nearly 10 hours following a blackout that left the city without power for three hours Sunday.

Ken Dies, a system control manager with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, said there was a problem starting the backup generators at the Jackfish plant, which is why it took so long to restore power.

Normally, Dies said a control centre operator is on duty at all times at Jackfish and can start six of the eight generators on site from inside another building.

"He can normally start everything three buildings over," Dies said. "Last night, there were issues."

Dies said the power corporation is still investigating why the generators wouldn't start. Around 12 to 15 workers were called in to help start the generators, including two from city power distributor Northland Utilities, he added.

Although two of the generators require manual ignition, Dies said the other six can usually be counted on to start from inside the control centre.

"Most times, they work, and they're pretty reliable on the remote start."

The generators, which are used to back up the Snare hydro system 140 kilometres north of Yellowknife, can run for long periods of time during power emergencies, Dies said. The plant has a 1.2-million litre diesel tank and Dies said the power corporation has arrangements to refill the tank during longer outages.

Power was cut to Yellowknife around 3:45 p.m. yesterday, likely due to a faulty line near Snare River, Dies said.

"It was probably two lines slapping together, or frost weighing down a line to the ground, snapping it to a tree on a line. The line we're talking about has some fairly old structures," Dies said.

A power crew headed out to the site of the fault first thing this morning to determine the exact cause of the outage. Crews had isolated the line sometime last night, Dies said, and were able to fully restore the city to hydro power at around 3 a.m.

"The last diesel could have been turned off earlier, but we wanted to make sure all our other lines were OK," Dies said.

Diesel-powered electricity first came on for residents around 5:30 p.m., after nearly two hours without power. Dies said the entire city was lit up again by 7 p.m.