Grande Prairie

The Grande Prairie biomass facility is a 25-megawatt cogeneration plant that uses wood waste from Canfor Corporation’s sawmill in Grande Prairie, Alberta. This power plant produces both steam and electricity for Canfor’s operations and electricity for sale to the City of Grande Prairie and Alberta Infrastructure.

The biomass is prepared on-site to produce what is termed “hog fuel.” The hog fuel is fed into reciprocating grate combustors. The hot flue gases from the combustion process are drawn through steam generators (boilers) to produce super heated steam. This steam is extracted from the turbine at various stages to be used for plant processes and to supply the thermal energy to Canfor.

The exhaust steam is condensed in an air-cooled condenser and returned to the feedwater system to be used again in the steam cycle process. The flue gases from the combustion process pass through multi-clones and an electrostatic precipitator to remove the particulate load to below Alberta Environment limits.

On average, the plant produces about 170,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

TransAlta owns and operates the Grande Praire facility through its wholly owned subsidiary Canadian Hydro Developers.

At a Glance

• Technology: Shin Nippon Steam turbine, ABB generator

Environmental Highlights

• The Grande Prairie facility is EcoLogo^M certified by the Environmental Choice Program.

Note: The Grande Prairie facility operates as Canadian Gas & Electric Inc.