Energizing the Deep South East
May 26, 2015 was the official opening of the ENMAX Shepard Energy Centre in SE Calgary. This facility is the largest operating natural gas-fuelled power facility in the entire province. This facility is able to add more than 800 megawatts of electricity to the provincial grid – enough to meet almost half of Calgary’s needs! You can read more about this incredible facility by clicking here .
Here are some quick facts about the new facility:
– the facility produces about 50% fewer greenhouse gas emissions per megawatt hour than a conventional coal plant.
– Over four years, some 4.3 million man hours went into the construction.
– At full capacity, the plant’s cooling towers will use 14 million litres of water daily, all of it recycled from the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant.
– The main building houses 24 km of pipe, 149 km of power cable and 278 km of instrument/control cable.
– Some 4,400 tonnes of structural steel, 20,000 cubic metres of concrete and 1,007 concrete pilings were used.
– Each exhaust stack is as tall as a 22-storey building.
Facilities like the Shepard Energy Centre are going to become increasingly important for Alberta’s energy grid as many of our coal plants power down by the end of the decade. Additions like this make ENMAX a more valuable entity on its own while remaining an important asset for the City to maintain.
