Community
Second power outage hits Hay River amid heat warning and smoke conditions
A blackout happened on Wednesday, which lasted for about six hours
Hay River residents faced a second power outage on Friday morning, just two days after a six-hour blackout caused by issues with one of the community’s diesel generators.
The outages come as the community remains under a heat warning, with temperatures reaching up to 30C and smoky conditions affecting much of the southern NWT.
As of 2:30 p.m. Friday, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) reported that more than 400 customers connected to the third breaker were still without power.
The organization say power is being restored to customers on the remaining breaker, section by section. No timeline has been given for full restoration.
Hay River was taken off the Taltson hydro system on July 29 for annual maintenance at the hydro plant. The community is expected to run on diesel for the next three weeks.
NTPC said both outages were caused by technical issues with the diesel generators.
“The outage began when one of the generators at the Hay River power plant went offline unexpectedly, resulting in the loss of approximately 500 kilowatts of generation capacity,” the power corporation wrote in a statement following Wednesday’s outage.
Mechanical issues were then reported on the other two generators while crews attempted to replace the first, resulting in a widespread outage.
“Electricity demand is very high due to the weather conditions. The ongoing cooperation of customers in keeping their electricity consumption as low as possible would be very helpful in stabilizing the local electricity system,” stated NTPC.
