The Prince George district energy system is now operating.
Without any public notice, the switch was flipped to begin a new era in municipal energy. The multi-million-dollar piping system installed under downtown and plugged into the wood waste burners at Lakeland Mills is now providing heat to its customers - the biggest being the Prince George taxpayer.
It was feared that the city's cutting-edge energy system had been shelved or completely lost when the main heat source exploded and burned in the Lakeland sawmill accident on April 23..
More than $4 million was invested in the piping system and the work involved systematically digging up the entire length of George Street and more.
"We've been ramping up to an official start. It takes awhile to get to the proper temperature levels, but we are now stabilized at the right temperature and so we began to transfer the heat," said Sinclar Group president Greg Stewart, which owns Lakeland. He confirmed that the energy plant sustained no practical damage in the explosion or fire.
With no mill running, the concern was that Lakeland would be unable to generate the kind of wood waste necessary to burn in the furnaces, thus no heat for the pipes into various downtown buildings.
"We are burning hog fuel," Stewart clarified. "We worked out an agreement with Canfor Pulp, they have been willing to help us on this. It is a trade agreement. They get fibre from us - logs or chips - and they provide us with hog to burn."
The system need never be shut down again other than for regularly scheduled maintenance, Stewart said. The system has a natural gas backup for those times the mill's furnace facility is offline. As far as Sinclar is concerned, the operation is permanently underway.
"For us, it was important to get that system up and running and supply that heat to the city," Stewart said. "We had a contract and wanted to honour that agreement, but, too, we have had so much support from the community since the explosion that we wanted to give back, and part of that is in the form of that heat to those civic buildings, so the public is receiving that benefit."
Sinclar sent in an engineering analysis team to make sure the explosion and fire didn't compromise the energy system, and the BC Safety Authority did its own probe of the equipment and deemed the system operational.
