by Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 15/97) - A little co-operation from both the community and the weather provided a temporary solution to a rare problem for the NWT Power Corporation.

On Sunday Yellowknife went without half of its power -- the hydro half -- while a crew of line workers struggled to fix a faulty power line 15 kilometres north of the city.

That left the Jackfish and Bluefish diesel plants operating at about 90 per cent capacity.

"The mines could have shut down more equipment. If we lost a diesel or something ... they were prepared to shut down totally at the drop of a hat," said Dan Grabke, area operations superintendent in an interview Monday.

Mechanics were on standby all day at Jackfish in case one of the generators malfunctioned.

The engines held out for the day, said Grabke, but one came to a sputtering halt a half hour after the hydro power was restored.

"It was like it was giving it's heart and soul for this project and when we were done it said, 'okay, I'm not needed, I'm outta here,' " said Grabke.

Warm temperatures were a big bonus, he added. If had been down to -40, another 10 per cent would have been added to the load on the generators.

The hydro was shut down to allow workers, toiling on a lake north of the city from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., to splice the supporting steel core of a line that had parted the week before.

It was the first time a splice had failed since the line was built in 1989.

Line superintendent Paul Campbell spotted the problem Jan. 6, during an aerial survey flown to find the cause of a brief power outage early that morning.

Campbell noticed that a power line between two towers was badly stretched. The strength of the lines from the Snare Lake hydro plants comes from a steel cable surrounded by an aluminum coating.

The aluminum conducts the 115,000 volts each line carries.

When the steel cable parted, the weight of the line, and the tension required to suspend it between towers, stretched the aluminum.

Groundwork for the repair was laid the day before, when equipment was trucked in and laid out.

A loader cleared the old, rarely-used road, to the lake earlier in the week.

Crews replaced the steel core as a temporary fix. The entire segment of line will be replaced this summer.