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Power to the people

Jennifer Obleman
Northern News Services
Published Friday, August 10, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Where were you when the lights went out?

If you were in Yellowknife, Behchoko, or Dettah, then there's a good chance the people at the Jackfish Lake power station were working hard to restore your power.

NNSL Photo/Graphic

Ken Dies, Northwest Territories Power Corporation system control and hydro planning manager, points out Snare Rapids, the northernmost of five hydroelectric sites that service Yellowknife, Dettah, and Behchoko. - Jennifer Obleman/NNSL photo

Power Facts:

  • There are about 13 hours of power outage a year in Yellowknife, Behchoko and Dettah; the power is on 99.85 per cent of the time
  • Lightning is the number one cause of power outages. Last year, there were 11 outages due to lightning strikes. So far in 2007, there have been nine outages, eight of which were caused by lightning
  • About 530 megawatts of power flow through the Jackfish Lake power station every day—that's enough to light 5.3 million 100-watt light bulbs
  • In the mid-1990s, the Jackfish Lake plant used 40 million litres of diesel a year. Last year, it was 500,000 litres, and most of that was because of test runs and covering for Bluefish Hydro repairs, which began in June and will wrap up in September. Diesel usage decreased after the mines ceased operation and the Cascades hydro station opened in 1998.
  • Currently, 80 per cent of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation's operations is hydro. Emissions are 40 per cent lower than Kyoto targets

    Source: NWT Power Corp.
  • "We understand how important it is to have power in your house," said Randy Patrick, director of hydro operations for the South Slave and North Slave regions for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation.

    "As soon as we have an outage of any sort, we also don't have power here. We have the same problem.

    We have to get our own power back before we can do anything. You can't just flip a switch to turn the power on."

    When the power goes out, the first order of business at the Jackfish Lake power station is to clear all 19 feeders, then open all the breakers at the station to restore power there.

    Battery banks keep the computers running, so when the power goes out, hundreds of pages of data spew out at the Jackfish Lake station, advising operators of any problems in the system.

    If the hydro plants are running, then the lines can be re-energized to restore power to the community; otherwise, the diesel engines can be started.

    In order to ensure the quality of power, electricity is restored to one section of town at a time, starting with the hospital and continuing until all 19 sections are up and running.

    When a partial outage occurs, power is usually restored within five to 15 minutes. It can take up to an hour to restore power following a full outage.

    Typically it takes four or five people to restore power - and answer the phones, which ring off the hook in the control room, monitored 24/7.

    "One of the problems here is people calling and saying, 'Did you know the power's out?'" said Patrick. Although power outages seem frequent, the reliability of service is actually very high - the power is on 99.85 per cent of the time, according to Paul Campbell, assistant regional director of hydro operations.

    But the North doesn't use the same kind of power grid as in the south, where all power lines are interconnected, so if there's a failure along one line, another generator can handle the load, preventing a power outage.

    Here, the hydro plants are interconnected, but there's only one transmission line connecting them all to Yellowknife.

    "If we lose the transmission line, we lose it all," said Campbell.

    "We're guaranteed an outage."

    It would be possible to add another transmission line to reduce the number of power outages in Yellowknife, said Campbell, but it would cost about $35 million.

    Another option would be to make full use of the diesel plant, which is currently only used as a standby power source, but that would also be quite expensive—the diesel alone would cost $100,000 a day, he said.