Last evening at 5:47, we broke the all time record in Yukon for electricity consumed at any one time. We were generating 83.43 megawatts at that point. This broke the previous record of 83.39 megawatts set on December 19th, 2012.
Of that 83.43 megawatts produced, about nine megawatts of that was with diesel.
For every hour that we produce one megawatt with diesel, it costs Yukoners between $300 and $350. That means just for that one hour over dinner last night, Yukoners paid up to $3,240 for back-up diesel.
In total yesterday, we generated about 86 megawatt hours of electricity using diesel. For that one day alone, it cost more than $30,000 to use our back-up diesel.
It's numbers like this that are pushing Yukon Energy to encourage conservation, search for reliable, renewable energy projects that provide winter energy whenever needed, and why we are looking to switch from diesel to natural gas. If we had been using natural gas yesterday instead of diesel, the cost - fuel for fuel - would have been about a third less.
It's also worth noting that this week's all-time peak occurred even without the Bellekeno mine in operation. Clearly our growth is being driven by more than just the mines, but but all electrical customers.
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