Anaerobic digesters at Hamilton’s Woodward Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant produced six million cubic meters of biogas per year at 65 percent methane. The plant burned some of the gas in a boiler for heating, but flared the majority of it. Seeing the gas as a source of renewable energy, the city responded to a Request for Proposals from the Ministry of Energy with plans for a 1.6-megawatt (MW) cogeneration facility fueled exclusively with digester methane. The project would also ultimately meet a need for increased backup generation at the treatment plant, as identified by a power study.
The Ministry selected the city’s proposal through competitive bidding, based on the price of energy per kilowatt-hour. It was one of ten winning projects totaling 395 MW of renewable generating capacity. The city then turned to Toromont Power Systems in Concord, ON, which had developed the project proposal, to build, operate, and maintain the cogeneration plant.