The Town of Hay River is about to be switching their primary supplier of electricity.
Coming into place on March 1st, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation will be taking over as the primary distributor of electrical services for Hay River. The NTPC has already been providing the Town with power in smaller ways since 1988.
Doug Prendergast, the Manager of Communications for the NTPC, explained how the process of the company becoming the primary supplier came about.
“This whole process dates back to 2015, when the Town of Hay River decided to put out am RSP to see if they could find lower rates. NTPC submitted a bid, and it was subsequently selected by the Hay River council, which meant that the franchise to distribute electricity in the community was awarded to the NTPC.”
In the announcement of the service change, the NTPC states that Hay Rive residents should not expect any major disruption to their electricity once they take over. Any existing power bills and electricity accounts will be automatically transferred over the NTPC’s jurisdiction.
The first thing Hay River locals should expect to see is NTPC workers making their way across the community to change electricity metres.
“It will be done street by street, neighbourhood to neighbourhood. We will use social media and other means to try to give people advanced notice of when crews are expected in their neighbourhoods. We’ll be working alongside Naka Power, who need to remove the existing metres, and then they’ll be replaced with the metres from NTPC.”
Overall, the NTPC says that new customers won’t have to worry about any major procedural changes once NTPC takes over in March. However, Prendergast recommends new customers look into the Customer Service Portal (www.myntpc.com) which will allow residents to keep track of their consumption data, pay bills online, and keep track of payments and other transactions.
