New power plant is close to opening
By Collin Gallant on September 2, 2017.
Medicine Hat News Workers began flaring gas at the city’s new power station on Friday as the facility nears its in-service date later this month. The facility, known as Unit 16, sits on city land on Box Springs Road where crews have been constructing the 43-megawatt gas-fuelled generation facility since June 2016. Operators fired a small flare stack on Friday in order to clean and prepare new high pressure gas lines and system. On Tuesday, Sept. 5, however, the main 30-metre flare stack will be put into operation and could continue flaring intermittently for the remainder of the week. The commissioning date could be in late September or early September, according to a release from the electrical generation department of the city utility division. The project is expected to cost about $56 million, according to recent updates, and will bring the city’s generating capacity to about 240 megawatts. That level allows local power demand to be met in cases in which the largest generator at the main power plant is offline. 9-8
