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Power mostly restored after outage in Yellowknife

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Emergency lighting came on in the NNSL newsroom after much of downtown Yellowknife was left without power on Thursday afternoon.

The cause of Thursday's power outage was due to a rare distribution issue, according to Northland Utilities.

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) generates the electricity and transmits it to the city, but once it reaches Yellowknife, Northland Utilities handles its distribution.

Darin Smith, manager of Northland Utilities Limited in Yellowknife, said one feeder line out of 12 in the city malfunctioned and crews had to troubleshoot to find the source of the issue. More than 600 customers in downtown Yellowknife were affected by the power outage, he said. 

“We wanted to make sure everybody’s safe and take the time so that we don’t cause any issues,” said Smith. 

Power was 95 per cent restored to downtown Yellowknife within two hours, with the exception of one customer.

"We had some equipment issues with the transformer at the Quality Inn,” said Smith.

Crews isolated the issue, replaced the transformer and power was restored to the Quality Inn by 5 p.m. that day.