Power outage woes continued in the Yellowknives Dene First Nation (Dettah) yesterday evening where hydro customers lost power for over two hours. Closeby, in the city of Yellowknife some customers experienced a brief power hiccup lasting under 10 minutes.
N.W.T. Power Corporation said that the location and cause of the outage are still under investigation.
Earlier this month, multiple power outages occurred affecting thousands of customers in the Yellowknives Dene First Nation (Dettah), Yellowknife, Ndilo and Behchokǫ̀.
Doug Prendergast, who is N.W.T. Power Corporations communications manager, told True North FM yesterday evening that the cause was unknown and crews were working to address the outage.
“Power was restored in Yellowknife in under 10 minutes while power in Dettah should be restored in the next 20 minutes,” said Prendergast.
N.W.T.’s Power Corporation also provided this update to its customers yesterday evening on social media:
“We are aware of the partial current outage in Yellowknife, Dettah. The outage was related to the Bluefish Line. Power has been restored to Yellowknife, while Dettah customers remain offline temporarily. Crews are investigating.”
However, some residents in Dettah reported that the outage was going upwards of two hours.
“Any updates yet? 2 hours now without power in Dettah,” said Facebook user Hikhialok Ubluriaq Ehaloak
Representatives from Yellowknives Dene First Nation said that yesterday’s power outage was resolved within about two hours.
Prendergast told True North FM today that the outage in Dettah took longer to resolve than originally anticipated.
“The outage in Dettah lasted just over two hours,” he said.
Prendergast said the outage in Dettah and Yellowknife originated on the transmission line from Bluefish Hydro,” he said.
Prendergast explained that the outage was not “generation-related” and is still under investigation.
“The issue was not generation related – there was a fault on the transmission line from Bluefish Hydro,” he said.
“The exact location and cause of the fault is still under investigation,” he added.
The Bluefish hydro line is owned and operated by N.W.T. Power Corp.
The issue was addressed when crew made a switch on the line yesterday evening.
“Power was restored to Dettah by making switches on the transmission line to isolate the fault area. What this means is that the section of the transmission line where the fault is thought to be was de-energized. Power was then restored in Dettah as the fault was no longer able to disrupt the flow of electricity,” Prendergast explained.
Earlier this month Prendergast told True North FM that the company does have preventative programs in place to avoid hydro-electric service disruptions.
“NTPC has comprehensive preventive maintenance programs to support reliability of operations in all the communities it serves. When outages occur, an investigation is carried out by our Operations staff to identify a root cause. We also have an Outage Investigation Committee that meets monthly to review past outages to review root causes and then consider options to prevent their recurrence,” he said.
“A Reliability Improvement Committee, including senior NTPC leaders, also meets on a regular basis to review reliability performance,” added Prendergast.
