Snow causes glitch at substation knocking out power to thousands

Power knocked out to thousands of Enmax customers including Chinook Centre.

A New Year’s Day surprise for thousands of ENMAX customers in Calgary after power was knocked out due to weather related issues.

ENMAX says at around noon New Year’s Day, a total of 8,856 customer sites were impacted, including Chinook Centre which opened its doors to shoppers January 1st.

The areas impacted were several commercial and industrial areas in the southeast, parts of Riverbend, Willow Park, Acadia and MapleRidge.

Power had been fully restored by 2:30pm according to ENMAX.

Officials say the cause of the outage was primarily weather related. A large quantity of snow impacted operations at Substation #9.

Many businesses including hundreds of retailers at Chinook Centre closed their doors until power was restored.

Meanwhile some retailers and shoppers were able to get around the glitch.

“It’s pretty easy when if you’ve got cash. Cash is king.” said one shopper, “iPhones have flashlights on them. Pretty easy.”