Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
5/31/13
SaskPower said late last week that it has signed a three-year memorandum of understanding with U.K. researchers aimed at linking the construction and operating experience gained at its Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage facility with an academic program in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the $377 million-equivalent joint initiative with the U.K. Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) is to “facilitate research and related opportunities aimed at improving costs and performance of CCS,” according to the provincially-owned Canadian utility “The knowledge and expertise that SaskPower has gained through its carbon capture and storage project at Boundary Dam Power Station is now in demand by other organizations around the world,” SaskPower President and CEO Robert Watson said in a May 24 statement. “This type of international collaboration is very welcome and will benefit the energy industry as a whole.”
The $1.24 billion post-combustion capture retrofit on Boundary Dam’s 110 MW Unit 3 is expected to be the world’s first power generating unit integrated with CCS to come into operation in April. The facility, located in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan just miles from the North Dakota border, is on schedule, having recently reached peak construction, and is expected to begin hot testing in November, President of CCS Initiatives at SaskPower Mike Monea said at a conference earlier this month. The project has received the support of Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who touted Boundary Dam as a success story in the province at a recent CCUS conference and was reportedly on hand last week as SaskPower signed the MOU. SaskPower secured a 10-year off-take agreement with Cenovus Energy late last year for all 1 million tonnes of CO2 that will be produced at the facility annually for nearby enhanced oil recovery operations.
SaskPower Looks to Bank on CCS Expertise
SaskPower and the UKCCSRC announced the MOU on the sidelines of a CCS information and planning symposium held by the utility in Regina, Saskatchewan last week, where dozens of CCS stakeholders toured Boundary Dam and heard technical presentations about the facility. The event marked one of SaskPower’s first attempts to capitalize off its growing status as a CCS early mover. The symposium was the first event of the ‘SaskPower CCS Global Consortium’ created earlier this year to, for a fee, share lessons learned from development of its flagship CCS project and transfer expertise related to technology selection, financing and construction to help inform other potential projects. SaskPower is also building a carbon capture test center at is nearby Shand power station with Hitachi, Ltd., where vendors of capture systems can test their technologies on a live flue gas stream from the plant.
