Shortly before 6.00pm
Monday January 20 the Corporation’s Inuvik power plant went out
of commission. For about 30 minutes the whole town was without power
but by 7.00pm supply had been restored to all but a handful of customers.
A communication
fault with one of the natural gas fired generators seems to have been
the initial cause of the problem.
The outage did have
a significant impact on the reliability of the system and staff worked
throughout the night to manage the supply to customers.
Brian Willows, Regional
Director, said that his priority was to ensure customers had power and
to achieve this it was necessary to switch the load causing some fluctuation
of power supply around the town.
“We did have
a small number of customers without power throughout the night and we
were most concerned about their situation. However working closely with
the Town, Fire Department and RCMP we have been able to ensure a minimum
of inconvenience for these customers” he said.
By 2.00pm Tuesday
the entire system was stable and repairs to the main substation nearly
completed. Some further work to the distribution system is still to
be done however the Corporation is hopeful that this will not result
in any further outages.
Willows apologizes
to customers on behalf of the Corporation for any inconvenience that
customers may have experienced, and expresses thanks to the Town and
emergency services for their assistance.
Further information
contact
Peter
Watt
Marketing & Communications Officer
Tel (867) 777-7700 or (867) 874-1288
