Photo by Whitehorse Star
WIDESPREAD POWER FAILURE EXPLAINED – Yukon Energy’s complex is seen in Whitehorse. Monday’s lengthy power failure, which affected approximately 12,124 customers, happened while a crew was working in Riverdale, the company said Thursday.
Monday morning’s lengthy power failure occurred while Yukon Energy crews were doing upgrades to the substation in Riverdale, the company says.
Monday morning’s lengthy power failure occurred while Yukon Energy crews were doing upgrades to the substation in Riverdale, the company says.
The outage affected approximately 12,124 customers in Whitehorse and south to Teslin, including Marsh Lake, Carcross and Tagish.
Guy Morgan, the corporation’s director of operations, said Thursday two breakers were inadvertently opened during the work.
That caused three hydro units and three LNG units at the Whitehorse Rapids Dam to shut down at 8:55 a.m.
When the breakers were opened, Morgan explained, the generating units automatically shut down as they’re designed to do when they detect an abnormality.
After an investigation into the cause, and after the breakers were closed, restoration of power by Yukon Energy and ATCO Electric Yukon went according to plan, he said.
Morgan said restoration takes time because the redistribution of power can’t be done all at once. Rather, it has to be done in chunks to bring the system back up slowly.
Riverdale was the first to be restored at 10:09. All customers were back on before or shortly after noon. Areas north of Porter Creek were not affected.
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Comments (2)
Up 8 Down 0
Ryan Mannen on Apr 29, 2019 at 4:18 pm
This stuff happens, but I’m more concerned that the outage caused the lights at the Alaska Highway and Two-Mile hill to go completely out. Why isn’t there a backup temporary power supply to allow the lights to flash red all ways when there’s a failure? The lights at the CGC and Range Road intersections were on, but the Two-Mile hill intersection were just out. This is pretty unsafe for arguably the most used intersection in the city.
Up 8 Down 9
Dave DownUnder on Apr 25, 2019 at 11:35 pm
The incident report usually ends with "the employee is no longer working for the company".