February 21, 2005

Gas pipeline to university expected to cost $6M

Queen’s set for $24M power plant

By Irwin Rapoport

DCN Correspondent

Kingston’s Queen’s University should be starting construction for its new co-generation project in a month’s time.

About $24 million will be spent to renovate the facilities within the existing power house so that it will be able to house two 7.5-megawatt natural-gas fuel-led turbines.

“We’re already in the process of doing the detailed design,” said Ken Hancock, the energy management co-ordinator for Queen’s Physical Plant Services.

“It’s an engineering, procure and construction project. They are gearing up to start construction in about a month.”

The contract was secured by a consortium consisting of Solar Turbines Inc., Gryphon Engineering Inc. and E.S. Fox Ltd., the general contractor.

“We’re looking at the possibility of having two turbines and working in conjunction with the Kingston General Hospital (KGH),” said Hancock. “We have one unit that has been approved by Queen’s University’s board and we are proceeding with the planning for the two, with option of scaling back to one if we don’t get the KGH on board.”

The KGH has until March 24 to sign on to the project.

The natural gas to operate the turbines will come by a pipeline that will connect the co-generation plant to the Trans-Canada Pipeline at Glenburnie, a small town north of Kingston.

Utilities Kingston has amortized the cost of the pipeline’s construction over 20 years.

According to Hancock, the facility is needed to guarantee that both the university and hospital have secure supplies of power whether the difficulties are caused by problems via the provincial or local grid.

“We have recently gone through some difficult times with power outages,” he said. “The first one that brought it to our attention was the ice storm (in the late 90s). The hospital is working to have a full service hospital in times of a power failure.

“It’s also the viable economic thing to do,” he added. “We think that during peak times of the day, it would be beneficial to produce our electricity.”

Queen’s and the KGH would share the power from the second turbine. The current university heating plant, next to the KGH, feeds steam to the main campus, the West campus, the KGH and two other hospitals. In addition to supplying the current steam distribution system, electricity created by the plant will be sent to the hospital’s electrical substation.

Utilities Kingston manages the natural gas distribution system for its territory.

“We are bringing in a new feed from the Trans-Canada Pipeline and we are into a detailed design at the moment on that,” said Jim Miller, manager of utilities and technical services for Utilities Kingston. “We will go to construction this year.”

The seven-kilometre pipe- line is expected to cost about $6 million.

Currently, Kingston is served by a single pipeline that is nearly 50 years old.

“Given its age,” he said, “we are starting to get somewhat concerned about it. We haven’t had any problems with it, but it would be wise make sure that we have a redundant supply.”

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