ATCO Electric are still looking for the reason behind Jasper’s fifth power outage for the month, which occurred last Monday (Dec. 14) and lasted between 20 and 25 minutes.

Jasper has now experienced 65 outages for 2009, which is four more than 2008. ATCO could not supply the number of customers these outages affected, or how long they lasted prior to the Fitzhugh’s deadline.

One thing the company is sure of, is that a generator was tripped in the Palisades Plant, but the reason behind that is unknown.

“We’re not sure why the controls reacted the way they did,” said Kris Sakowsky, ATCO Electric’s vice president of distribution.

Though ATCO is trying to find the root of the problem, Sakowsky suggested that sometimes they simply can’t find out.

“There’s various controls and protections that operate and there is many, many of them. So, they’re just trying to sort out what caused it,” he said, adding that, “sometimes, to be honest, we may never find out.”

To better explain the problem, Sakowsky used the analogy of a car break down.

“It’s like in your car. Your engine won’t start... the car won’t work because the engine won’t work... say maybe the starter is broken, so why did the starter fail?”

He also noted that this kind of outage would be classed a ‘load shed’ by the company. There have been five load sheds in the last two years.

Of the 126 outages in the last two years only eight are classed as ‘unknown’ by the company. The majority of outages are caused by trees, which accounted for 38 outages. However, 21 of the outages were due to equipment failures, and 19 because of birds or animals.

The first three outages for December, which occurred on the first and second, were caused due to technical difficulties. The fourth outage was due to the extremely cold weather that Jasper was experiencing.