Atikokan pellet plant fires up in 2014: Aecon awarded contract for power plant fuel silos.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

The Atikokan Generating Station will be burning wood biomass by the end of 2014.

The conversion project will create 200 construction jobs and is expected to create 200 more in supplying wood pellets to the plant.

It's a new green life for the one-unit, 207-megawatt northwestern Ontario plant that was originally slated for closure in 2003 when the McGuinty government decided to close all of the province's coal-fired plants.

"It's an exciting time for the town and Ontario Power Generation (OPG)," said Chris Fralick, OPG's manager of its plants in Atikokan and Thunder Bay.

"This represents an off-coal end of an era for Atikokan and the start of a new one. Atikokan is already on the map as having one of the largest biomass plants in North America."

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The cost of the conversion will be $170 million.

Aecon Group's industrial design division was awarded the contract to design and build the pellet fuel handling and storage systems. The value of Aecon's contract is half of the pricetag for the conversion.

"At OPG, we are committed to delivering this project on time and on budget," said Fralick.

On July 19, the province announced that a long-awaited 10-year power purchase agreement between the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) had finally been reached.

It took two years from when then-Provincial Energy minister Brad Duguid first announced that the plant would be converted to pellets.

"Being the first of its kind made it a unique situation to negotiate," said Fralick.

The station is burning down its coal inventory and will be taken off-line this fall so the surgery can begin early next year.

Excavation started this summer on the new material handling and receiving facility.

Since biomass needs covered storage, Aecon is building two 200-foot high silos with a capacity of 5,000 tonnes each on the west side of the power house.

The interior of the plant will not physicially change much, said Fralick.

"We'll be cutting a hole in the side of the power house to feed in the biomass, cutting into the coal bunkers to (create) day bins to serve as an intermediate hopper between the silos and the pulverizers.

"From there, it blows into the boiler the same way coal...