A key NWT hydro plant beset by years of problems will not be back in service until at least March, the territorial power corporation said on Thursday.
The Taltson hydro dam powers the territory’s South Slave region but has been offline since the summer because of corrosion to a key part of the facility known as a surge tank.
Work to fix the latest problem, initially estimated at $15 million, is now up to nearly $37 million, most of which is the cost of using diesel to power communities with Taltson out of service.
Taltson has existed for 60 years. Since the plant was shut down in May 2023 for what should have been a six-month-long overhaul, it has experienced a series of major problems. The overhaul itself ended up taking nearly two years.
In its Thursday update, the NWT Power Corporation said work to fix corrosion in the surge tank at Taltson is advancing but “will take longer to complete than originally estimated.”
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“It is expected that the remediation work will be completed by the end of February 2026, which will be followed by commissioning of the Taltson unit before it can be returned to service,” NTPC stated.
“South Slave communities will be back on hydro by the end of March.”
The extra work should extend the surge tank’s life from a few more years to up to a decade, NTPC said.
“If the modelling data is favourable, replacement of the surge tank can be delayed for a number of years, ultimately reducing capital costs in the short to medium term,” the power corporation stated.
“The cost to replace the surge tank at its existing location would require a two-year outage of Taltson and would cost approximately $131M ($51M in on-site construction costs and $80M in ongoing electrical generation costs).”
