Reducing Power Outages

The question we have been asked most often over the last several weeks is: why are there so many power outages?

While we can’t address outages related to Yukon Electrical Company Ltd., we will try to give you some understanding of what is occurring at Yukon Energy and what we are doing to reduce the number of outages.

We take our responsibility to provide reliable power seriously and like you, we are concerned about the number of outages we’ve experienced lately. While we can’t prevent all outages (Mother Nature has a hand in some of them) there are things we can do and are doing to improve reliability.

• We have reviewed our Capital Plan and have put all projects aimed at improving reliability and decreasing outages at the top of our priority list. In 2009, approximately two-thirds of our core capital budget is earmarked for projects related to reliability. We have started working through this list and expect that as a result, we will see significant improvements in our outage numbers.

• We are working with Yukon Electrical Company Ltd. to make changes to the transmission and distribution systems, so that if there is an outage, it will affect a smaller geographical area, meaning fewer people will lose power.

• When doing future budget planning, we will look at buying new equipment rather than repairing existing infrastructure. That being said, Yukon Energy is very aware of our duty to keep power rates as low as possible and we must find an acceptable balance between reliability and cost to customers.

Our plan is already starting to show results. You may recall that last year, there were a series of outages related to our largest Whitehorse hydro unit. That piece of equipment (known as the governor) has been adjusted and we have had no difficulty with the unit since then. We believe we have found a long term solution to this particular problem.

A comparison of our power outages elsewhere in Canada shows that while we have more black-outs, they are much shorter in duration than the national average.

One of the reasons we have more outages is that since we are a small company, we don’t have the same redundancies built into our system that large southern utilities have; redundancies that prevent some power outages. We can build in those redundancies, and in some cases are doing so, but it takes time and money. This goes back to the challenge of finding a balance between reliability and cost.

The reason our outages are shorter than the national average is that we are fortunate to have a diesel back-up system, which most other utilities don’t have. It allows us to bring the power back on fairly quickly (within an hour or two in most cases). We have all heard stories of people in various parts of Southern Canada going several days without power. Luckily that’s something we don’t have to contend with.

The bottom line for Yukon Energy is that we are committed to doing better, and we are working as hard as we can to win back your confidence in us.