Yukon Energy will be burning diesel over the next few weeks.
Whitehorse, Faro, Mayo and Dawson City will be running diesel generators to make up for an energy shortfall.
The Mayo hydro plant and Aishihik have been taken offline so that new generating capacity at those plants can be tied into the grid.
There is also maintenance work being done on Aishihik’s transmission lines.
While they don’t have an exact timeline, the diesel generators will be running for at least the next two to three weeks, said Janet Patterson, spokesperson for Yukon Energy.
“It just happens that we’ve got to get the work done and so we’re having to rely on diesel to make sure that we can do the work we need to do,” she said.
Both Mayo B and the new turbine at Aishihik should be up and running by the end of December.
That’s important because “Aishihik tends to be our winter plant,” said Patterson.
“In the wintertime here in Whitehorse, we don’t have nearly as much water going through the system as we do in the summertime,” she said. “At Aishihik it’s a different kind of a system so we can actually store the water throughout the year, so it’s available in the wintertime when we need it the most.”
Contact Josh Kerr at joshk@yukon-news.com