A late night power outage on Sunday (July 10) in Banff and Lake Louise left some people still in the dark Monday morning (July 11) until crews were able to fully restore power to the area around 10:45 a.m.
A late night power outage on Sunday (July 10) in Banff and Lake Louise left some people still in the dark Monday morning (July 11) until crews were able to fully restore power to the area around 10:45 a.m.
Scott Schreiner, vice-president of communications for AltaLink, which is responsible for electrical transmission lines in Alberta, said the problem began at 11 p.m. last night and power was restored completely as of 10:45 a.m. this morning.
“Our control centre received a signal indicating a problem with the transmission line feeding the town of Banff and Lake Louise,” he said. “At that point we attempted to re-energize the line remotely, but were not able to do that, which indicates a problem with the line itself.”
Schreiner said crews began investigating the cause of the outage during the night, however, were unable to find what is causing the problem. As a result, early this morning a helicopter began flying up and down the line to try and identify the cause of the power outage. He said the cause is believed to have been a tree on the line, however crews were unable to confirm that as the reason why residents and businesses were without power for almost 12 hours.
While crews attempted to identify the cause and find a solution, he said 4,000 customers, 10,000 people in Banff and west to Lake Louise, were without power on Monday morning.
But not everyone in Banff was in the dark. AltaLink and Fortis Alberta re-routed power from the Cascade hydro station near the community to restore power to some parts of the community, according to Schreiner.
“In partnership with Fortis, who have been helping us out, we have been able to restore power to parts of the Banff townsite,” he said. “We hope to continue to bring the power back on, so we can get everyone back up and running as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Meanwhile, in Canmore a related outage occurred on Sunday night at 11 p.m. Fortis Alberta spokesperson Alana Antonelli indicated the outage affected 3,700 customers and was restored by 11:30 p.m.
"Our power line technicians have indicated that it was most likely related to the transmission outage we were seeing today," she said.
