Inuvik - NWT Power Corp. representatives promised town council and residents last week the system collapse which caused September's extended town-wide blackout won't happen again.

From left, a team of NWT Power Corp representatives turned up at the community hall on Thursday Oct. 28 to face the music over the Sept. 28 extended blackout in Inuvik. From left, Mike Bradshaw, Mike Ocko, Mark Kopinec, and Terence Courtoreille. - Andrew Rankin/NNSL photo

But a resident who attended an Oct. 28 public meeting on the issue questioned whether enough was done to prevent it in the first place.

"I'm not satisfied," said Aiden Dunne.

Speaking to four power corp. officials, Dunne accused the utility provider of not establishing a system of checks and balances that might have prevented the seven to 10 hour town-wide blackout. He zeroed in on the cooling system leak that caused both the back-up diesel power plant and a diesel engine designed to restart the main natural gas plant to fail.

"They admitted it was a problem of the cooling system going down," he said. "I accept that, that's fine. But a multi-million-dollar operation like this, you plan for those contingencies. You don't let yourself get into a situation where a major fault like this can cause the rest of the system to go down. Did someone not see that feeding three diesel engines off of one cooling system might cause a problem?"

Mike Bradshaw, NTPC spokesman, argued the interconnecting cooling systems isn't uncommon in the industry and the breakdown hadn't happened before.

But its breakdown was among several errors outlined in an independent review of the electricity system conducted by Orbis Engineering. The results of which were summarized in a pamphlet distributed at the sparsely attended meeting at the community hall as well as at a presentation given to council on Oct 27.

Malfunctioning surge protectors and transformers as well as the natural gas plant's computer system were also stated to have contributed to the lengthy power outage.

During the two hour meeting residents complained about the high frequency of power outages which Bradshaw acknowledged is a problem facing the corporation. He said NWT Power Corp.'s service is more reliable than the average Canadian utility provider, according to industry standards. He said although power outages are more frequent here in the NWT than elsewhere in Canada total duration of power outages are generally shorter.

The corporation plans to follow through with recommendations made by Orbis, which include installing a separate cooling system for the diesel plant.

"There are a number of new investments being made to the cooling system as well as the transformers and computer programing upgrades," Bradshaw told residents. "We've done everything possible to ensure this never happens again."

The pamphlet also explained the Oct. 8 outages and surge were caused, in part, by a series of electrical and mechanical malfunctions as a result of the Sept. 28 blackout.

Councillors praised the power corp.'s around-the-clock effort to bring electricity back to the community as well as the prompt service of repairing or refunding devices damaged or ruined by the surge.

Bradshaw said the money used to pay for system repairs and customer damage claims is being taken from an emergency reserve fund and it would not result in increased power rates.

Larry Peckford, president of the town's Chamber of Commerce, attended both Wednesday and Thursdays meetings. In last week's Drum he stated he was sceptical of the power corp.'s ability to provide reliable power and added he was looking for reassurance service would improve. He said the meetings

convinced him progress is being made.

"I really believe that there will be change for the better," he said.

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