Yukon Energy caught off guard by power demand at -38 °C
Yukon Energy says it was caught off guard by the high energy demand, which caused an hours-long blackout in some parts of town on 19 December.
Image source: CBC
Canada: Yukon Energy says it was caught off guard by the high energy demand, which caused an hours-long blackout in some parts of town on 19 December.
The territory is in the middle of a cold snap, and the temperature in Whitehorse was around –38 ° C when the outages happened at about 5 p.m. Some city residents were in the dark for more than four hours.
“It was a case of us getting caught a little bit out, in terms of, you know, what level of demand we were seeing from the north end of town,” said Andrew Hall, Yukon Energy’s president, on 20 December.
Hall blames the outage on its Takhini substation, where heavy power demand “tripped off” a transformer. He says the transformer hadn’t been at the proper setting.
Yukon’s extreme cold spell is expected to last through this week, with temperatures expected to stay below –30 °C until at least Christmas Day. Hall is urging residents to do their part to reduce demand, for example, by not running large appliances like dryers or dishwashers during peak hours.
Source: CBC
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