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INUVIK - Just three weeks after NTPC's president and CEO apologized to Inuvik residents, the community faced two more power outages last week.

Power outages on July 7 and 8 were due to a lack of natural gas flowing into the generators, according to the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. - Samantha Stokell/NNSL photo

On July 7, a power outage started around 4 p.m. and then again around 4:30 p.m. The next day, the power went off again for 20 minutes at 9 a.m. With the history of hours-long outages still fresh in the minds of Inuvik residents, these outages lasted at most 40 minutes.

The entire town was affected by the power outages, which were caused by a lack of natural gas supplied to the generators. A few times a year, Inuvik Gas must clean out its 50 km-long pipeline. To clean it out maintenance workers run a pig – a foam bullet - through the pipeline. This time they ran into a unexpected amount of fluid, either methanol, water, or a mix of the two, which stopped the gas flow and reduced the pressure.

"It was a normal maintenance procedure that reduced the gas flow to the power corporation," said Bud Seens, general manager of Inuvik Gas. "It didn't affect anywhere else. The power corp. needs more pressure."

The block lasted 15 minutes and the delay to turn the power back on came from the restart process for the diesel generators. Depending on the particular situation, this can take up to 40 minutes. The second power outage on July 8 was the switch back to natural gas generators.

"Most of the town came on after 10 minutes and the remainder after 30 minutes," Axford said. "The power was interrupted by Inuvik Gas maintenance. It didn't work as planned and the engines shut down."

Inuvik Gas and NTPC are working together to ensure this incident will not happen again. Inuvik Gas will let NTPC know when it will perform maintenance of this sort so that it can switch to diesel generators and keep the electricity on in to the community.

At the June 23 Inuvik council meeting, Axford apologized for the five power outages in late 2010, explained the causes and promised to improve service to the community. He claims that the power corporation is improving, but notes it won't happen immediately.

"I know we are improving, but it takes time," Axford said. "I'm hoping the town is patient with us."

Deputy Mayor Chris Larocque said he's impressed with how the power corp. has operated. When the power went out, it kept the town informed about the circumstances, he said

"Before we were all in the dark about what's happening, but now we're their first call," Larocque said. "There's some positive changes in my mind. Slowly but surely they're making changes and filling positions locally."

In Inuvik, electricity comes from three natural gas reciprocating Wartsila engines, and there are four diesel reciprocating engines available for back up generation. The power corp. originally selected the Wartsila engines because of its reliability and high efficiency.

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