If you live in the Southern or Central Yukon, you may have noticed some of your clocks losing time over the past several days. The cause stems from a malfunctioning control clock we use here at Yukon Energy to help us regulate the amount of power we generate.
We synchronize the time on a sophisticated electric wall clock with a dead-accurate satellite signal as a means of ensuring the correct amount of power is being generated at any given time. When the time on our electric clock drifts more than 10 seconds in either direction, our operations know there is either more power being generated than is needed, or there isn’t enough power being produced. Either way, the operator will adjust the amount of power production to bring the electric clock back in line with satellite (GPS) time.
In this particular case, our control centre’s wall clock was running faster than the satellite clock, so staff reduced generation as per normal practice. What we didn’t know was that there was a problem with the electric clock. When generation was reduced, that caused all AC clocks (clocks plugged into the wall) to lose time.
The change happened quite gradually so it took a few days before we knew there was an issue with our wall clock.
The clock we use is a sophisticated piece of equipment. This is the first time it has failed since we started using it in 1998. We have ordered another clock and we hope to have it installed within a couple of weeks. In the meantime we are relying on an older clock to regulate power production. The clock that malfunctioned will be repaired and will run in parallel with the new one as a back-up system, hopefully ensuring we don't have this issue again.
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