Why the Thermal?

Today's question: Why are you burning diesel/LNG right now? I thought you didn't need to use any thermal backup in the summertime.

Thanks for the question. You are correct that usually we have more than enough hydro in the summer months to meet all the electricity needs on our system. However, there are times when, if we are working on certain generation or transmission equipment, we need to supplement our hydro with either LNG or diesel. Even so, over the course of a year about 99 percent of the electricity we generate is from renewable sources (mostly hydro, with a small amount of wind and solar).

For the past several days we have been doing some maintenance work on our transmission line that runs north of Whitehorse to Carmacks. This has required us to take that section of line out service, meaning the grid-connected communities north of that area (Dawson, Mayo, Keno, Faro, Pelly and Carmacks) are being served purely by our northern generation assets (hydro in Mayo, supplemented by backup diesel in Dawson).

We expect to have the transmission line work completed and our Yukon grid connected again by this weekend.