Rankin Inlet (Oct 02/06) - The community of Rankin Inlet rallied to keep the power flowing this past week after the hamlet's main generator broke down.

The water pump in the generator let go at the Rankin power station on Sept. 23, taking a number of gears with it when it broke.

The hamlet's two back-up generators were immediately pressed into service to keep power going in the community.

The secondary units are half the size of the main power supplier, so the hamlet had to drastically reduce its electricity consumption during the next five days.

Two water pumps were flown in from Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, to fire up the main generator, which was back at capacity on Sept. 28.

Rankin Mayor Lorne Kusugak said the community did a superb job of conserving power while the main generator was down.

He said the community kept power consumption well-below normal during peak periods throughout the week.

"That's pretty incredible when almost every household had to buy into the plan for significant power savings to occur," said Kusugak.

"The community is to be commended for its efforts."

Kusugak said he wasn't surprised to learn of the situation because the problem seems to hit every community about once every five-to-10 years, and Rankin was due.

He said the hamlet was lucky the problem surfaced in September, rather than the middle of January, because warmer temperatures made it easier for residents to comply with his requests.

"As soon as I was informed of the problem, I gave as detailed a report as I could to the local radio station.

"Residents understood and really stepped up to help us deal with the situation."

While Kusugak wasn't surprised that the power corporation had to go outside of Nunavut for the water pump, he was surprised a part that crucial for the Rankin power system couldn't be found anywhere in Canada.

He said it's time for the Qulliq Energy Corp. to take a look at doing a serious feasibility study on the Rankin windmill project.

"If the corporation put any kind of effort into looking at its feasibility, I'm sure it would find the project saves money, is reliable and is something we should have.

"Getting the proper people here to conduct an in-depth study would give us a solid answer one way or the other, rather than Qulliq just brushing it off.

"It almost appears like they decided to put up a windmill for a couple of years just to say it didn't work out."

Kusugak said Rankin will see similar problems in the future if its power-producing capacity isn't increased to meet growing electrical demands.

He said hard lessons can be learned from this problem, which could be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to issues with Rankin's power supply.

"Having said that, it was pretty amazing how quickly the power corporation resolved the problem.

"We had parts come quite a long way to be installed and working overnight.

"But, we still need to be better prepared for the next time we face a similar problem."

Rankin senior administrative officer John Hodgson said there was a silver lining to the power shortage. It provided an opportunity for the hamlet to test emergency-measures systems by running the airport complex on a generator and monitoring how a generator supported the arena.

He said the hamlet treated the power shortage as an exercise in many respects, and is now better prepared to handle a similar problem in -50 C conditions.

"Keeping spare parts on hand in the Kivalliq is a costly endeavour," said Hodgson.

"When the hamlet ordered its new 950 loader, an extra $7,000 was spent on common parts we know breakdown.

"We buy the parts, even though it's hard on our budget, to have available when they need replacing at -50 C.

"When you see a cost of $7,000 for common parts for one piece of equipment, you realize there's only so much any organization can do."