Valley Power

Drayton Valley Power operates a small plant near Drayton Valley, Alberta. The facility uses wood refuse from the Weyerhaeuser sawmill near Drayton Valley about 120 km west of Edmonton.This facility was originally located in North Folk, California, the facility’s move to Alberta came in 1996 when logging near North Fork, California was prohibited to protect spotted owl habitat and the plant’s fuel supply ended. It has a capacity of 12 MW and began operations in 1997 after being re-commissioned by Yankee Energy for Drayton Valley Power Ltd. It was the first facility of the Drayton Valley Power Income Fund, and was the subject of its initial public offering (IPO) in 1997. Up to 10.5MWh of facility capacity is sold to TransAlta Utilities Corporation (TransAlta) annually pursuant to a long-term power purchase contract(The Drayton Power Purchase Agreement), and any excess is sold exclusively to the Alberta Power Pool at the Pool price. The Drayton Power Purchase Agreement has a term of 20 years expiring on 24 May 2016. All sales of the plant output are made in Canada. Interconnection is direct at the site to TransAlta transmission facilities.

The plant burns wood waste provided by the sawmill that manufactures oriented strand board (OSB) and lumber, without charge, to heat water and create steam. The facility consists of a boiler (Wickes Boiler - 1953) and a GE steam-turbine generator (1953) retrofitted with a bubbling fluidized bed when it was reconstructed at the new site. With only 21 employees this is one of the smallest grid producers in Alberta. The operators are Chris Ukranetz, Meghan Mcintosh, Dave Webster, and Steve Ballantyne. Working a 12 hour revolving shift, 250 plus megawatts of power is added a day into the Alberta grid. The maintenance team consists of two journeyman millwrights Interprovincial Red Seal Certified, Frank Skrlj and Steven Hoshowski. Manager Danial Ivey strives to keep this mini-producer cost effective in this day of mega-producing plants. Larry Oldenburg controls the staffing issues, and Louise Genovey actually runs the plant and keeps things on an instant as-needed basis. A series of loader operators, and hog operators, along with assistant operators make up the rest of the staffing.