Yellowknife and the surrounding area experienced two power outages this week that were both due to lightning strikes.
Doug Prendergast, manager of communications with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC), said on Tuesday that one shortage early on Monday and a longer one later in the day were both due to frequent lightning activity in the North Slave region.
"Lightning strikes on the Snare transmission line caused the outages, Prendergast stated in an email on Tuesday. "There was heavy lightning activity in the North Slave for extended periods of time (Monday)."
The first incident happened at 7:35 am and affected the entire city.
"Power was restored over the next 50 minutes, with the length of the outage ranging from 16 to 50 minutes, depending on the location within Yellowknife," Prendergast stated in an email.
Later that day, beginning at 14:35, another outage occurred.
"Power was restored in downtown Yellowknife between 16:14 and 16:15," he said. "The final customers in Yellowknife had their power restored at 17:00."
In both incidents, Yellowknife, Behchoko, and Dettah were impacted.
NTPC posted information to its social media feeds on Facebook and Twitter at 4:30 p.m. stating that power restoration efforts were underway following the afternoon incident.
"Update on Yellowknife outage: Restoration efforts are underway and power should be restored shortly," stated the Tweet. "Restoration in (Behchoko) will take longer. A lightning strike is believed to be the cause."
At 3:45 p.m., the power corporation had announced a full system outage had taken place in Yellowknife and that a restoration of power was underway.
