by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 26/97) - It's Northwest Territories Power Corporation against the ravens, and the ravens are winning.

The birds have been responsible for two of the city's three blackouts this week, but Yellowknife's power problems will be over in 10 days, power company spokesman Dan Roberts says.

The utility is within 10 days of completing a two-month, $2-million upgrade of the town's power supply.

The power grid controls have been partially disassembled to do the work, so when something unforeseen happens -- such as a raven touching two wires at once somewhere on the grid, as happened on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning -- the town goes black.

Once the system is put back together, said Roberts, the power supply will be more reliable than in the past, and certainly more consistent than in the last week.

"It has been an unfortunate combination of circumstances," Roberts said about this week's problems.

Tuesday morning's blackout was caused by a technician throwing the wrong switch during a test, the other two marked ravens having fatal accidents somewhere on the grid, which essentially short-circuited the city.

At the time of the blackouts, he said, technicians had opened breaker switches at the main substation to work on equipment. If the breakers had not been open, he said, the system could have absorbed the disturbance, as it has done before.

In fact, dead ravens are often found around power corridors after suffering the kinds of mishaps that caused the Tuesday blackout, Roberts said.

The problem is also more noticeable in the summer, he said, because most of the town's power is coming from the Snare Lake hydroelectric plant.

In winter, the company is supplementing hydroelectricity with its huge diesel generators, and they can provide quick power if something happens to the other source.

Raven-related accidents are unlikely to happen at the Jackfish Lake plant, Roberts said, because the company has installed devices which emit a harsh, scraping noise that inspires the same terror in ravens as Revenue Canada audits do to people.

"They do work," he said.

"I can't remember the last time we found a dead raven in the substation."