The Yukon's primary electrical grid will become much more reliable in the coming months, Yukon Energy president David Morrison has promised.

Morrison held a news briefing Friday to provide assurances the publicly-owned utility is making significant strides in improving service.

There were 35 outages last year on the Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro (WAF) grid, affecting anywhere from one or two customers for a minute or two, to system-wide blackouts.

He said the corporation, just like the ratepayers, finds that unacceptable.

Some of those outages are deemed uncontrollable; birds on the wire, squirrels in the substation, lightning strikes...

Not much can be done when Mother Nature loads up the power lines with a dump of snow, then gets them rockin' with gale-force winds, Morrison said.

"There is really nothing we, or anybody else, can do about that," he said.

But of the 37 outages in 2008, 17 were defined as controllable.

Morrison said he'd like to slash the number of controllable outages by 75 per cent before the end of this year, and he's confident Yukon Energy is on the way to delivering the goods.

"I think it goes without saying, to start with, that providing reliable power is what we do," he said. "And having these outages has been a disappointment for us, and we do not want to see it continue."

Morrison said the system is old, and up until the last few years, wasn't receiving the annual care and maintenance it needed to ensure reliable delivery of electricity.

In the last three years, Yukon Energy has spent approximately $8 million annually maintaining and upgrading the system, and another $6 million is earmarked for capital works this year, he said.

And still, Morrison noted, the corporation is still playing catch-up, though he suspects it's about to round the corner this year.

Yukon Energy will also be working with Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd. to implement a safety net that will limit the number of customers affected when an outage occurs, he said.

Yukon Energy generates most of the territory's electricity and Yukon Electrical distributes most of that power.

Morrison said currently, if there's a generating problem, generally the entire system will shut down, rather than risk damage to any of the hydro or diesel generators.

The two utilities will be examining how to make the system more resistant to general blackouts, by installing equipment that would shut down specific areas in times of trouble while enabling other areas to remain on, he said.

Morrison said that work will be done in the next few months.

So not only will the number of controllable outages be reduced through the increased care and maintenance over the last few years, but when outages do occur, fewer customers will be affected, he said.

Morrison said he estimates Yukon Energy will need to spend between $6 million and $8 million annually from here on to maintain a higher standard of reliability.

"We take our responsibility very seriously," he said. "We understand why people are concerned and upset.

"We do have a plan in place, and we will get this work done."

Morrison said while the WAF grid is old and in need of constant care, it also offers emergency back-up diesel generation that you don't find on a lot of electrical grids down south.

If the hydro units go down, it's just a matter of time before the grid gets powered back up with diesel generators, unlike some of the larger grids down south that don't have a back-up, he noted.