Two power outages that hit areas of Yellowknife and Dettah Wednesday evening are now under investigation, a spokesperson from the Northwest Territories Power Corporation has stated.
Doug Prendergast, manager of communications with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation said in a June 24 email that the first outage took place at about 6:16 p.m. Power was restored at different times throughout the city, he said.
The downtown core saw power restored at 6:52 p.m. In other areas, the restoration of power was much shorter with the Forest Drive and Fire Hall area saw service brought back in seven minutes.
Stanton Territorial Hospital saw its power restored in six minutes at 6:22 p.m, Prendergast stated.
Second outage
A second partial outage took place at 6:27 p.m. before being restored at 6:51 p.m. In this case, the downtown core was not impacted, Prendergast stated.
During the second outage, the community of Dettah and areas of the Ingraham Trail suffered a lack of power but both areas saw service return to normal at 8:35 p.m.
Power was restored to Dettah and the Ingraham Trail at 8:35 pm.
Prendergast said that the source of both power outages was uncertain as of Wednesday night.
"The outage originated on the transmission line from the Bluefish Hydroelectric Facility and a line crew has been patrolling that line," he stated. "Lightning was present in the area and may have been a factor."
The city has seen a number of power disruptions in recent weeks including two on June 15 due to a maintenance issue at Snare Rapids hydroelectricity facility and two on June 5 .
Wednesday's power outages, it appears, had nothing to do with those occurrences, Prendergast stated.
"The cause of the outage is under investigation but there is no evidence that it is related to previous outages," he stated.