A recent spat of power outages are “anomalies” according to ATCO Electric, however for some local business owners the loss of power is more than just an inconvenience, it’s hurting their bottom line.
For Andrew Yakielashek, owner of Syrahs of Jasper, he’s lost several reservations due to the outages this summer and in at least one case was forced to close his doors early.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” said Yakielashek. “We lost one complete night of service. In the middle of summer, that’s a big hit to the pocket book.”
Not only has it hurt owners, it has also hurt his servers who rely on tips to make a living, as well as the community’s reputation.
“It reflects very poorly on us as a tourist community when we have travellers from all over the world spending a lot of money to come here and the power goes out.”
Rick Lagace, the store manager for TGP, said the most recent outage on July 9 cost his store thousands of dollars.
“This is the peak season where we make our money,” Lagace said, adding the last outage lasted over an hour.
He said he’s thought about installing back up generators, but said that could cost his store hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For others such as Dave Hamdi, owner of Timberwolf Rocky Mountain Emporium, power outages have simply become part of doing business in Jasper.
“I think we’ve just become immune to it,” said Hamdi. “We’ve set up back up batteries for our system so we can operate up to an hour or two at a time without power, but it still affects us.”
According to ATCO Electric, the first two outages on May 8 and May 20 were caused by mechanical failures at the Palisades Power Plant while the third outage on July 9 was caused by a tinfoil party balloon that got tangled up with a power line.
“We’ve been continuing our ongoing maintenance and we have people on staff 24/7 to respond to these things. Those situations that have occurred as of late we feel they were anomalies and we’ve corrected those deficiencies,” said Larry Gibson, manager of distribution operations for the South Peace district of ATCO.
“We don’t anticipate any future problems, but we can’t guarantee anything.”
He downplayed concerns that the power outages were linked to an increase in demand as the Park welcomes thousands of extra visitors with free admission for Canada150.
“We’ve been monitoring the loading there in the park as we usually do,” said Gibson. “Last year was a record setting year for the park for attendance and we’re not seeing much of an increase in the loading in the park.”
Despite the recent outages, Sam Koebel, co-owner of Snowdome Coffee Bar and Coin Clean Laundry, said the situation is a lot better today than it was a few years ago when power outages were a common occurrence.
“Our power’s actually a lot better now than years gone by,” said Koebel. “In the past we had problems with the quality of the power, but right now it’s pretty good.”
He said improvements such as burying the power lines underground have helped improve service.
In April ATCO Electric held an open house to discuss its future plans to build a new power line and transmission facility to connect Jasper to the provincial electricity grid.
If approved by Parks Canada and the Alberta Utilities Commission, the company expects the bulk of the construction to take place between Oct. 1 and March 31, 2018. The transmission line is expected to go into service in May 2018.
ATCO submitted its final Detailed Impact Analysis (DIA) to Parks Canada for final review on June 14. Parks Canada said it is still reviewing the document.
The $84 million project envisions building a new 45-kilometre transmission line that will connect Jasper to another transmission line near the east gate. The project also includes building a new substation that would be located where the existing Palisades power plant is, eight kilometres north of town.
Should the project go ahead, the Palisades Power Plant, which currently supplies the bulk of Jasper’s electricity, will be decommissioned and torn down.
According to ATCO, the power plant is nearing the end of its operational life span and needs to be replaced.
The Astoria Generating Station also contributes power to the park’s electrical network, but to a far lesser degree. ATCO has yet to decide what it intends to do with the generating station once the new power line and substation is built.
During the open house a representative for the company said the transmission line is more economical and the probability of failure is lower than compared to the aging power plant.
Paul Clarke
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