Striking a Power Deal with Alexco | Wednesday, September 29, 2010

You might have heard on the news that we have asked the Yukon Utilities Board to approve a Power Purchase Agreement we have reached with Alexco Resources. That's the company that plans to begin mining and milling operations at the old United Keno Hill Mine at Keno next month.

You can find the complete application form, including the Power Purchase Agreement, on our web site here.

In summary, under the terms of the PPA and pending Utilities Board approval, Alexco will be responsible for the full costs of:

• Construction of a 1.65 kilometre spur line from Yukon Energy's Mayo-Keno transmission line to the mill site (approximate cost $330-thousand)
• negotiating and concluding the Power Purchase Agreement, including the regulatory costs (approximately $100-thousand)
• decommissioning Yukon Energy's spur line once the mill shuts down.

In addition, Alexco will pay a fixed charge of almost $7,300 per month for as long as it buys power from Yukon Energy as an industrial customer. The money will help pay the cost of Yukon Energy's existing Mayo-Keno transmission line.

Alexco will pay the Industrial power rate set by the Yukon Utilities Board.  The rate is approximately 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour, depending on Alexco’s peak demand.
 

The Latest on our Carmacks-Stewart Transmission Project | Friday, September 24, 2010

It's been a while since we brought you up to date on the work being done on the Carmacks to Stewart transmission line. Crews are almost finished installing Stage 2 of the line. Valard Construction (the main line construction contractor) and Arctic Power (one of Valard’s partners) have just about completed the work of setting and framing the power poles and stringing the line between Pelly Crossing and Stewart Crossing. They expect to be finished by the end of October.

Valard, in partnership with the Northern Tutchone First Nations, is the same company that built the transmission line for Stage 1, which runs from Carmacks to Pelly Crossing. Valard has again partnered with the Northern Tutchone First Nations to complete Stage 2.

The other major part of this project involves building or modifying three substations. A new substation is needed at Stewart Crossing to join Yukon Energy’s two transmission systems (the Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro grid and the Mayo-Dawson grid). Another substation is being built at Pelly Crossing. An existing substation at Minto Landing must be expanded to accommodate the new section of line.

Work on the substations has started and should continue until next spring.

The entire project is on budget and the line is scheduled to be operating by the beginning of May 2011. The new line will connect Yukon’s two major power grids, giving more flexibility and stability to our transmission system. Photo of crew installing crossbars: www.archbould.com.

The Equipment Guard | Friday, September 17, 2010

Yukon Energy is working hard to provide you with safe and reliable power. Once again this year, we are spending two-thirds of our core maintenance budget on projects that will improve reliability. However despite our best efforts, power outages do sometimes occur. That's why we encourage you to invest in protection for your appliances and electronic equipment. There are a few options to choose from:

Outside Surge Protectors
These are sometimes called outside surge arresters and a qualified electrician can install them on your electric meter or panel to help protect your electronic equipment.

Inside Surge Protectors
These devices are installed directly between the equipment you want to protect and the wall outlet. They act as the last line of defense against power surges. Using these in combination with outside surge protectors gives you a higher level of protection.

Surge protectors act like electrical sponges, sopping up excess energy and preventing most of it from reaching your equipment. And like sponges, surge protectors can only absorb so much excess energy. So it's important to choose a surge protector with the appropriate features and ratings to match the equipment you want to protect.

Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) Systems
In an outage, a UPS will quickly switch to backup battery power. UPS are not designed for continuous use over a long period of time. Instead, the ones designed for home use give you about half an hour to save work on your PC and safely shutdown or turn off your sensitive equipment.  

• home appliances
• personal computers/laptops
• computer monitors
• televisions
• DVD, blu-ray and video game consoles
• printers
• copy machines
• external zip drives/CD ROM drives
• gas pump controls
• credit/debit card approval systems
• cash registers
• bar code scanners

What You Said About Us | Thursday, September 16, 2010

This summer Yukon Energy hired a firm to conduct a series of phone and on-line opinion surveys for us. The purpose of the surveys was to get a sense of what the general Yukon public and local business and community leaders know and believe about the Corporation. The information gathered assisted us in developing a public information campaign aimed at helping Yukoners better understand who Yukon Energy is, what we are working to achieve, and why.

We were impressed with Yukoners’ higher-than-average interest in participating in the research. When asked to answer questions about Yukon Energy, very few people said no. In total, more than 600 people from nine Yukon communities took part in the surveys.

The full results can be found here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).  For those of you who would like the Readers' Digest version, here is a summary:

-Yukoners understand that hydro-generated electricity is the mainstay of power generation in the Yukon, but strongly support the development of alternative energy sources to supplement hydro. You want Yukon Energy to bring forward creative ideas in meeting future energy needs.

-Yukoners strongly support the need for energy conservation as part of the solution to managing the Yukon’s energy supply and you see this as a shared responsibility among the public, the business community and big industry.

-Yukoners have confidence in Yukon Energy’s ability to plan, develop and manage the Yukon’s energy needs but are concerned that political and vested interest groups can be detrimental to effective, strategic, long-term planning.

-Yukoners feel you pay less or the same for energy as your northern counterparts and more than southern Canadians.

-Yukoners want to remain engaged in the discussion around the Yukon’s energy issues and needs and Yukon Energy’s objectives for a clean energy future that fits well with a public desire for cleaner energy alternatives.

We'd like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. While this was the first survey of this kind that Yukon Energy has done, it certainly won't be the last, and we will continue to communicate with stakeholders and the Yukon public about our plans and initiatives as we work to implement the priorities identified in the survey. 

A note of congratulations to Erin Giesbrecht, seen below, who is the winner of an iPad (in awarding this prize we randomly drew Erin's name from all those who filled out the online survey).

Atlin Office Closing | Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Every Friday throughout the summer, Yukon Energy representatives have been in Atlin to give residents the chance to ask us questions or pass along comments regarding the Southern Lakes enhancements concepts we are exploring.

We committed to keeping our Atlin office open until mid-September. This Friday will be the last day the office will be operating.

We'd like to thank everyone who took the time to come visit us and we are happy to come back to the community once we have the results of our first season of field studies, likely sometime in November.

We have compiled a list of the questions we were asked most often this summer in Atlin and thought it might be useful to share it with you.

No Easy Answers | Tuesday, September 7, 2010

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that Yukon Energy is exploring the possibility of putting a weir on the Atlin River, allowing us to slow the flow of water from Atlin Lake in the fall so that there would be more water for us to use for winter power production.

A number of people have asked, "Why don't you instead buy power from the existing hydro dam on Pine Creek in Atlin?"

Yukon Energy would love to be able to purchase power from the Taku River Tlinigit First Nation, which owns and operates the plant. However it's not that simple. First of all, the First Nation doesn’t have the amount of power that we need. It could opt to build a second power plant for additional hydro, although we don’t know how that would be received by the residents of Atlin.

Then there would be the cost of us building a transmission line from Atlin to Jake’s Corner in the Yukon. We would also need to buy the power from the First Nation, adding to the total cost per kilowatt hour.

We calculate power via a transmission line would cost between 20 to 25 cents/kilowatt hour, compared to the weir option which would be in the 7 to 10 cents/kilowatt hour range.

We are looking at a whole range of possible sources of clean energy, including enhancing our existing hydro facilities (Mayo B, a third turbine for Aishihik, the Gladstone Diversion concept, the Southern Lakes Storage proposal), geo-thermal, additional wind, waste to energy, and energy conservation. In almost all those cases, there are no easy or perfect solutions and there is often the need to weigh the pros and cons and move forward with what we see as the best choices given the circumstances.

We are certainly open to any and all suggestions for what we can do to meet the growing demand for electricity in the Yukon, keeping in mind that we are committed to providing power with clean, renewable sources.

The Silver Lining in the Dark Cloud | Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Of course no one wants or likes power outages. However there was one good thing that happened as a result of an outage on August 18th. It allowed us to find a new tool to help the Yukon River Chinook salmon reach their spawning grounds upstream from the Whitehorse Rapids fishladder. 

During the outage, we first had to increase the amount of water we allowed through the spillway of our Whitehorse dam so that our reservoir, Schwatka Lake, would not overflow. Then we slowed the flow so that the lake could re-fill. The extra water seemed to push the salmon closer to the entrance of the ladder. Then when the water flow was cut back the fish seemed to be enticed by the water flowing in the ladder. More than 100 salmon swam up the ladder in the few hours after the power outage. 

We had never seen anything like this before. Working with fishladder and fish hatchery staff, we simulated these conditions four times over the last two weeks (minus the outage of course). Each time there was a similar response from the salmon.

The faster the salmon can move through the fishladder and get to their spawning grounds the better it is for their health, so we hope to be able to use this tool in future years as a way of helping the fish on their migration. However we can't guarantee that we'll be able to do this every year; it will depend on summer water levels.

Preserving the Past | Wednesday, September 1, 2010

A couple of years ago while doing studies around Mayo Lake, Yukon Energy became aware of two heritage resources sites that needed some attention. In conjunction with the First Nation of Na-cho Nyak Dun we embarked on a project to protect and preserve the heritage values that the sites contained.