Canfor Pulp will invest $26 million to upgrade two turbo-generators at its Northwood mill and bring the operation significantly closer to self-sufficiency, company executives said Friday.
Work on the project is to start in September and is expected to be completed in eight weeks, Canfor Pulp president Brett Robinson said during a media event at the mill.
Once up and operating, it will free up 11 megawatts of capacity on the BC Hydro grid and provide 97 gigawatt hours of electricity supply annually - enough to power more than 8,800 homes. Additionally, the work will reduce Canfor Pulp's supply requirements from BC Hydro by 17 gigawatt hours per year.
The project is being made possible through an agreement signed under BC Hydro's integrated power offer, which encourages pulp and paper mills to generate additional clean power. And it levers on improvements made possible through the federal government's green transformation fund.
Putting in $33 million of its own money, Canfor Pulp received $122 million through the green transformation program for four projects at its Prince George pulp mills and $107.2 million of it was used to upgrade the No. 1 recovery boiler at Northwood and make it more efficient.
"The other thing it did was it freed up steam which is important for generating power and that's why we're here today," Robinson said. "That project allowed us to start looking at what else we can do."
Canfor's PG Pulp facility is completely self-sufficient and is selling power onto the grid and to its Intercon operation. Northwood will move closer to self sufficiency but not quite because it will still supply power to a neighbouring sawmill.
It will cut Canfor Pulp's electricity bill by about $700,000 a year and provide a five-year payback period. Compared to a typical bioenergy project, the new generators will require about a third of the fuel requirements to produce the same amount of power, Robinson said.
"Most mills in the early days, because power was so cheap, they didn't put turbo generators in but Northwood did, so Northwood has some legacy assets that are not as efficient as what you would buy today. It's like pulling the motor out of your car and putting in one that's way more efficient in today's terms and will generate a lot more power with about the same fuel requirements."
About 470 people work at Northwood.
