Latest news with #NakaPower
CBC
30-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Naka Electric suing Naka Power, N.W.T. gov't over similar name
The owner of Naka Electric has asked the N.W.T. Supreme Court to review the territorial government's decision to let Northland Utilities register names like Naka Power (NWT) and Naka Power (Yellowknife) without obtaining consent from him. Naka Electric, a Yellowknife business, filed a lawsuit against Northland Utilities, which rebranded itself last year as Naka Power. The territorial government is also named in the lawsuit. Arguments in the case were presented in the N.W.T. Supreme Court on Wednesday to Justice Shannon Smallwood. According to the company's website, Naka Electric is a contracting business that specializes in electrical work at mines. Owner Karel Pekelsky was represented in court by lawyer Neil Tichkowsky. Tichkowsky argued that the registrar was wrong to decide Naka Power (NWT), Naka Power (Yellowknife) and Naka Power Utilities were different enough from Naka Electric to be registered without permission from Pekelsky, and that the registrar didn't follow reasonable procedures in making this decision. Naka Power argued that the lawsuit should be thrown out and it should be able to continue to use these company names. The arguments Tichkowsky argued that the N.W.T.'s laws around the naming of businesses don't allow companies to use names that are similar enough to those of other businesses to "confuse or mislead" the public — except if they obtain permission from the similarly named business beforehand. He argued that this rebranding from Northland Utilities could indeed confuse or mislead people. A central part of his argument was that the registrar did find the name Naka Power on its own to be close enough to Naka Electric that the company needed Pekelsky's consent to use the name. Pekelsky did not give his consent, and the name Naka Power was never registered. Tichkowsky argued that Naka Power (NWT) and Naka Power (Yellowknife) were not meaningfully different from Naka Power as names, and that because of this Naka Power should have needed Pekelsky's permission to use those names as well. Tichkowsky said his client is asking the court to bar the utility company from registering the name Naka Power (Yellowknife), Naka Power (NWT) and Naka Power Utilities — or to require the registrar who approved the names to provide written reasoning as to why the names were not too similar to Naka Electric. Lawyer Christopher Buchanan, who represented Naka Power, argued that the registrar had discretion to decide that those names were meaningfully different from Naka Power, and that this was a reasonable judgment because they look and sound different. He also argued that the similar names Naka Power and Naka Electric would not confuse the public because Naka Power and Naka Electric have very little overlap in the services they offer and customers they serve, and are not in competition. He also argued the names were not confusing because "electric" connotes that a business does electrical work, whereas "power" is often included in the names of utility companies. He asked the court to throw out Pekelsky's lawsuits. He said even if the court decided Pekelsky's lawsuit over the names Naka Power (NWT) and Naka Power (Yellowknife) had merit, the lawsuit over the Naka Power Utilities should be thrown out because the addition of "utilities" makes the name more distinctive.
CBC
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Weekend power outage in Yellowknife an expensive frustration for some businesses
It was shaping up to be a busy spring weekend for businesses and events in Yellowknife, until a power outage shut almost everything down on Saturday afternoon. Some residents say they were without power for up to seven hours. The outage was a significant blow to many local businesses. Mark Henry, president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and co-owner of Copperhouse restaurant, says power outages aren't unusual, but the biggest concern for many business owners is the impact that a prolonged outage can have on some equipment. "There's quite often fried equipment that can run thousands and thousands of dollars, and then impact your ability to execute on your business operations," Henry said. Henry says outages during one of the busiest times of the week are especially disruptive for the service industry. He says he received phone calls and texts from several businesses expressing their frustrations. "There's impact on the lost revenue, the stress on staff that goes on. They're not quite sure what to do in a restaurant setting. You have a packed house, they've all ordered, and there's no way to execute on," Henry said. Naka Power says a faulty circuit breaker caused the city-wide power failure. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, earlier told CBC News that the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages. Performance of musical cancelled A local performance of a touring play at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre was also cancelled on Saturday evening. It was the only scheduled performance of Children of God, a musical by Corey Payette, in Yellowknife. It was set to run at 7:30 p.m. at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre but just before showtime, organizers had to pull the plug. Kacie Hall, the centre's communications manager, says it's never had a cancellation of this nature before, and Hall is grateful that audiences were patient and understanding. "This was a pretty big loss for our community and even for the presenting company, Urban Ink. They brought 20 people to Yellowknife between their cast and crew, which we don't often have such large shows in our programming," Hall said. Hall says it's especially frustrating, since the play was originally scheduled in Yellowknife in 2020 but was also cancelled then, due to the pandemic. "This show in particular was a tough loss for us... it's been twice that we've tried to bring it to Yellowknife and haven't been able to," Hall said. Chris Wood, general manager at the Capitol Theatre, says the power outage had a "horrendous impact" on his theatre, costing around $10,000 in revenue — and more. "It also took down our computer system, which took 24 hours to come back online. It corrupted files, it took out backups, and only now are we starting to get our figures entered from the weekend," Wood said. Wood says customers were understanding during the ordeal. He adds that they're used to power outages, though usually shorter ones. "They're usually 20 minutes to 40 minutes at the most. But now when we have power outages, they seem to last a lot longer than they used to," Wood said. For others, Saturday's outage was not as disruptive. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) held its spring carnival over weekend in Dettah, where an estimated 700 to 1,000 people visited and participated. Jennifer Charlo, the recreation coordinator at the YKDFN, says with the help of a backup generator, things were able to go on as planned. She says the power outage may have even brought more people out to the event at the local hall. "They were, like, telling me the power was out. They're like, 'oh well, might as well go back to the hall,'" Chor said.
CBC
06-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Extended Yellowknife power outage caused by breaker failure: Naka Power
A broken breaker at a power distribution substation caused Saturday's extended power outage in Yellowknife, Naka Power says. Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, told CBC News that the city-wide outage was caused by the failure of an "integral" piece of Naka Power's equipment, a "big breaker" at one of its three power distribution substations for Yellowknife. "It just failed completely," Massie said. The outage began around 3 p.m. MT. Some Yellowknifers got their electricity back around 5 p.m., but many were without power for much longer. The last Yellowknife customers had power restored around 10:30 p.m., leaving them without electricity for over seven hours, Massie said. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Massie said the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages. He added that Saturday's outage was unrelated to another extended outage in Yellowknife that occured several weeks ago. Unanswered question about outage The breaker's failure was "unexpected", Massie said, and Naka Power still doesn't know what caused it. He added that crews have not yet found any indication that anything was wrong with the breaker leading up to the outage. "It's not typical that we see that piece of equipment fail as it did," he said. "It's about 15 years old. Still, we test and maintain them on a yearly basis." Massie said it was also "unexpected" that the failure of this breaker would cause a city-wide outage at all — let alone an outage in Behchokǫ̀, a community more than a 100 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife that has a different power distributor. Naka Power doesn't know yet why the broken breaker caused such a serious outage, but it and NTPC — the power distributor for Behchokǫ̀ — are investigating, he said. CBC has requested an interview with NTPC about the cause of the Behchokǫ̀ outage. Confusion around the unexpected severity of the power outage was part of the reason it took so long to fix, Massie said. Technicians originally thought an issue with the power generation in Yellowknife caused the outage, he said, adding that NTPC would have had to fix that. Naka technicians started repairs after 4:30 p.m., once they realized the company's own broken equipment caused the outage, he said. Breaker still needs to be replaced Massie said Naka was able to end the outage by rerouting Yellowknife's electrical grid, to bypass the Niven Lake substation altogether. But the part that broke still needs to be replaced. The company hopes to replace it and get the substation back online by the end of this week, he said. Until then, Massie said Yellowknife will be getting all of its power from Naka's two remaining functional substations. Massie said there shouldn't be any reliability or demand issues on the city's power grid as a result of this setup. "The distribution system is designed for this," he said. "Fortunately, it's not -40 C. But even in that time, when there's a lot of load on the system, the system is designed to back itself up."
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Extended Yellowknife power outage caused by breaker failure: Naka Power
A broken breaker at a power distribution substation caused Saturday's extended power outage in Yellowknife, Naka Power says. Jay Massie, the utility company's vice president, told CBC News that the city-wide outage was caused by the failure of an "integral" piece of Naka Power's equipment, a "big breaker" at one of its three power distribution substations for Yellowknife. "It just failed completely," Massie said. The outage began around 3 p.m. MT. Some Yellowknifers got their electricity back around 5 p.m., but many were without power for much longer. The last Yellowknife customers had power restored around 10:30 p.m., leaving them without electricity for over seven hours, Massie said. The outage also affected Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T., leaving residents there without power for about an hour Saturday afternoon. Massie said the failure of the "integral" breaker, which was located at Naka Power's Niven Lake substation, was the "root cause" of both the Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ outages. He added that Saturday's outage was unrelated to another extended outage in Yellowknife that occured several weeks ago. Unanswered question about outage The breaker's failure was "unexpected", Massie said, and Naka Power still doesn't know what caused it. He added that crews have not yet found any indication that anything was wrong with the breaker leading up to the outage. "It's not typical that we see that piece of equipment fail as it did," he said. "It's about 15 years old. Still, we test and maintain them on a yearly basis." Massie said it was also "unexpected" that the failure of this breaker would cause a city-wide outage at all — let alone an outage in Behchokǫ̀, a community more than a 100 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife that has a different power distributor. Naka Power doesn't know yet why the broken breaker caused such a serious outage, but it and NTPC — the power distributor for Behchokǫ̀ — are investigating, he said. CBC has requested an interview with NTPC about the cause of the Behchokǫ̀ outage. Confusion around the unexpected severity of the power outage was part of the reason it took so long to fix, Massie said. Technicians originally thought an issue with the power generation in Yellowknife caused the outage, he said, adding that NTPC would have had to fix that. Naka technicians started repairs after 4:30 p.m., once they realized the company's own broken equipment caused the outage, he said. Breaker still needs to be replaced Massie said Naka was able to end the outage by rerouting Yellowknife's electrical grid, to bypass the Niven Lake substation altogether. But the part that broke still needs to be replaced. The company hopes to replace it and get the substation back online by the end of this week, he said. Until then, Massie said Yellowknife will be getting all of its power from Naka's two remaining functional substations. Massie said there shouldn't be any reliability or demand issues on the city's power grid as a result of this setup. "The distribution system is designed for this," he said. "Fortunately, it's not -40 C. But even in that time, when there's a lot of load on the system, the system is designed to back itself up."
CBC
06-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Power restored in Behchokǫ̀ and Yellowknife after outages
Power has been mostly restored after an unusually long power outage affecting Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ on Saturday afternoon. The Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) acknowledged the outage in a 3:15 p.m. MT post on social media. The power corporation said power had been restored to Behchokǫ̀ in another social media update at about 4:15 p.m. In Yellowknife, NTPC said power had been restored to the "the majority of the community" by about 5 p.m. "We are working with Naka Power to resolve issues on one feeder," NTPC said. In Yellowknife, power is supplied by NTPC and distributed by Naka Power Yellowknife. In Behchokǫ̀, power is supplied and provided by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation. Both communities get most of their energy from the Snare Hydro System, with Yellowknife getting additional hydroelectric power from the Bluefish hydro system. Both communities also have backup diesel power plants. In an email, NTPC spokesperson Doug Prenderghast said the power outage is believed to have originated in Yellowknife's power distribution system, and not during power generation.
