$30M project to power up region.

• Author: Wareing, Andrew
• Position: Timiskaming & region: special report

More power to, or rather from, Kirkland Lake by next summer.

Kirkland Lake Power Corp. is in the environmental review process stage to develop a new gas-powered turbine to generate an additional 30 megawatts of power to add to Ontario's power grid at peak periods. The facility already operates generators that put out 106 megawatts and are powered by natural gas and wood waste.

"The addition of the gas turbine will be to provide power to the province's electricity grid during times of high demand," says Kirkland Lake Power general manager Dan Raimondo.

He says the decision to build the power plant came last year from a request for proposals by the Ontario government, which was seeking power companies interested in developing extra power generators.

The anticipated cost to develop the project is $30 million. The target for going on-line onto the Ontario power grid is by August 2004. Parent company Northland Power Inc. will finance the project and, once built, the company will enter into a power purchase agreement with the Ontario Electricity Financial Corp., Raimondo says.

"Kirkland Lake Power was chosen because we have the existing co-generation plant that is already feeding power onto the Ontario grid," says Raimondo. "It can handle the (new) plant."

The company is currently undergoing an environmental assessment for the project.

"It's a process that can take three to six months," says Raimondo. "It's mandatory for projects of this type. We have to go through a complete environmental assessment. We already held our public meetings on June 10 for the project as part of the...