Power has now been fully restored to the community of Wekweètì following an outage that began yesterday afternoon.
This morning, Vic Barr, Manager, Naka Power Utilities reported electricity had been restored to about approximately 75 per cent of the community.
Barr said the outage was caused by a mechanical issue with two of the community’s three generation units. Crews remain on site and are working to restore full power. Temperatures in the region are currently in the minus 35 zone.
According to reports, the outage began at about 2 pm yesterday afternoon.
Officials reported that the company was able to reconnect Unit 1 to Unit 3’s radiator, which allowed for the system to get back online.
Crews reported that that work on the generators continues and encouraged community members to try to conserve energy until the work is completed.
“Our next step is to return all generation units to normal operation. Until then, we continue to encourage customers to use electricity wisely to help prevent overloading the system.”
On Friday at about 4 pm, a precautionary boil water advisory was issued on behalf of Chief Environmental Health Officer Chirag Rohit, due to “freezing damage” at the water treatment plant.
“This advisory is precautionary in nature and is due to freezing damage to infrastructure in the community water treatment plant associated with an extended recent power outage. The treatment plant currently cannot properly treat the water,” read a statement released on behalf of Dr. Rohit.
On Wednesday and on Jan. 12, the community experienced brief power outages lasting under one hour, but the latest outage extended nearly one day for some households.
Over the last week multiple power outages also hit other areas of NWT including three separate outages in Hay River, Enterprise and Kátł’odeeche First Nation. Doug Prentergast of NTPC says the exact cause of the Jan. 9 outage remains unknown.
