Your Questions About Outages

We have received a number of questions about some recent power outages and about what Yukon Energy is doing to improve reliability.

We apologize to all of you who have been affected by these outages. We understand your frustration and anger, and you are certainly justified in demanding answers of us.

Before going further, we must explain that there are two electrical companies that operate in the Yukon. We are the company that generates most of the power. We sell it to Yukon Electrical Company, which in turn distributes it to most of you. So while we can provide information about the generation and transmission side of the business, it would be inappropriate for us to talk about any issues related to distribution. Based on the feedback we have received, most of you don’t care where the problems originate…you just want the outages to stop. But we feel it’s necessary to explain this ‘division of duties’ so you can understand that we are only able to give you a partial picture of what’s going on with regards to power outages and why they are occurring.

There are a number of things that cause outages. Some we have no control over, such as when a tree falls on a transmission line or when lightning strikes the line. But what we want to address today are those outages we CAN control.

Yukon Energy recognizes that we have to continually work to maintain our aging system. That’s why in 2009 we earmarked approximately two-thirds of our core capital budget for projects related to reliability. Over the past several months we have been working our way through a list of maintenance projects, and as a result we have seen significant improvement. In 2009 we've had six major controllable outages on our Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro transmission system (which serves much of the southern and central Yukon) as compared to 17 in 2008. However even six outages are a reminder to us that with a complex electrical system there are no quick fixes, and we must be diligent in terms of continuing to make improvements to our system. We are committed to continuing with an aggressive maintenance schedule for the foreseeable future and we are committed to providing safe, reliable energy for all Yukoners.

Some of you have asked why there seem to be so many more power outages here than in Southern Canada. Elsewhere in North American, the provinces and states have interconnected transmission systems. That means when there is a loss of generation in one region, utilities can call on their counterparts in another area to provide additional generation. In this way, an outage is avoided. Here in the North, we have no such back-up system. So yes, there are more outages here than in the south, but the flip side of that our outages are shorter than the national average. That’s because we have a back-up diesel system that most other utilities don’t have. This system 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.

That being said, we realize some of you have concerns about the possibility of a winter power outage. In our next entry we’ll provide you with suggestions on how to prepare for a winter power outage and what to do if one happens.