If it wasn’t cold enough already, thousands of Yukoners were left without power for hours on Monday evening.

Despite a week-long forecast full of extreme cold warnings, Yukon Energy had not anticipated the electricity demands that came with the numbing cold.

The outages began at around 5:30 p.m. Monday in Whistle Bend, Laberge, Crestview, Kulan, parts of Takhini and Range roads, the Alaska Highway West and the Klondike Highway North. The temperature was -40 or even colder in some areas.

According to ATCO Electric Yukon, 3,360 customers were without power after a breaker at the Takhini substation overloaded, tripping protection settings.

ATCO said in an email to the Star that power was restored to all customers by 9:50 Monday evening.

The outages caused a stir online, with people praising frontline workers who braved some of the year’s coldest temperatures.

However, they pointedly asked the Yukon Energy Corp. (YEC) why power had failed in the first place. 

“Please hurry. It’s cold,” reads one response to ATCO’s initial tweet saying crews were responding to the outage.

Yukon Energy spokesperson Lisa Wiklund told the Star Tuesday the corporation had the supply to provide electricity Monday, but had not anticipated the demand.

“Demand for electricity is increasing and increasing, and we hit a new record peak,” she said.

The territory hit a new record for electricity demand Monday afternoon, spiking at 117.1 megawatts. That was five hours before the series of outages began, however.

Wiklund said peak energy use in the areas impacted Monday began when people were getting home from work, a usual high demand time.

Wiklund said safety settings had been readjusted and YEC does not expect a similar outage in the future.

YEC’s breaker was reset quickly, she said, but ATCO Electric crews then had to go out into the cold to reset the utility company’s breakers.

That took anywhere from one to just over four hours, depending on the neighbourhood.

Two other power failures, unrelated to Monday night’s, also occurred Tuesday. One was in Porter Creek and another in Pelly Crossing, where some residents were in the dark for as long as six hours.

ATCO tweeted at noon Tuesday that an unplanned power failure in Pelly Crossing was being responded to by power crews – some of them the same crews who had been dealing with Monday night’s failures in the Whitehorse area.

At 7:30 p.m., the company tweeted again to say the failure was resolved and power had been restored.

At 9:35, another tweet said some Porter Creek customers had lost power; ATCO posted at midnight that power had been restored there.

The Star reached out to ATCO this morning, but the company was unable to provide a reason for the failure before press deadline.

With high electricity demands, Wiklund said YEC is encouraging Yukoners not to use too much electricity during peak hours – 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., the lunch hour, and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. – to decrease strain on the system.

“Not running major appliances, turning your thermostat down one to two degrees, that will definitely help to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” she said.

The Yukon Party, meanwhile, criticized the territorial government for its response to Monday’s outages, as well as its investment in rented diesel generators for backup power in the winter months.

The official Opposition said Tuesday the incident proves the generators are unreliable.

“The flawed energy policies of the territorial Liberals has left the Yukon with a dangerously vulnerable electrical grid, and the recent blackout has given Yukoners a sense of what that means for them,” Scott Kent, the party’s energy critic, said in the release.

“The Liberals have stubbornly refused to make the necessary investments in reliable power supply. Instead, they have banked Yukon’s energy future on uncertain projects like the Moon Lake hydro project, which is likely at least a decade away,” Kent added.

Yvonne Clarke, the Yukon Party MLA for Porter Creek Centre, called the lack of communication from YG “very concerning.

“While ATCO Electric Yukon was providing ongoing updates on social media and responding to Yukoners’ direct concerns, Yukon Government has been silent on the matter,” said Clarke, whose riding encompasses Whistle Bend. Most of the hundreds of homes built there are heated by electricity.

“There was never any communication about where Yukoners who had to leave their homes should go, or whether centralized warming centres were being planned.

“I’ve heard from constituents that had to pack up young children to join friends or families that had heat, because they were worried about the temperature dropping in their homes,” Clarke added.

“While Yukoners are extremely thankful for the response of ATCO crews that braved the extreme cold to restore power, many are wondering why this happened and what is being done to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” the Yukon Party said.

John Streicker, the minister responsible for YEC, said Tuesday afternoon he believes communication was appropriate and timely on Monday.

ATCO had been informed promptly once the YEC breaker tripped, and the electric utility then informed the public through social media with regular posts, he told the Star.

The City of Whitehorse was informed at 6 p.m. and connected with the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO).

Power failures lasting longer than four hours, Streicker noted, necessitate an emergency response. But since the electricity was restored to all homes in four hours and 15 minutes, no emergency action was taken.

A city spokesperson told the Star the city has an emergency plan for such situations.

The Emergency Operations Centre would have been activated and the Canada Games Centre would have been converted into a large warming centre for those without power.

Streicker said the failures said nothing about the effectiveness of rented diesel generators, as the power losses were not a matter of supply but poor anticipation.

He said YEC president Andrew Hall told him the corporation should have been better prepared for the demand, as there was enough power to supply electricity uninterrupted during the peak.

Streicker also said Yukon Energy, ATCO and the City of Whitehorse conduct “after action reviews” when a “significant event” like this occurs to ensure they are better able to respond to mounting energy demands going forward.

On the afternoon of Dec. 8, more than 9,000 people lost their power in the Whitehorse area, Tagish, Carcross and Johnson’s Crossing and the Mayo Road.

ATCO’s Wiklund said a sensor had tripped at the Whitehorse Rapids Dam – causing the loss of three generating units and some of the liquefied natural gas units.

One Sunday afternoon in January 2006, during another period of -40 weather, thousands of Yukoners in Whitehorse and around the territory were plunged into the dark and cold after a prolonged power failure that lasted for as long as eight hours in some areas.