Over the last 40 years I have visited a lot of Power Plants, and one of the more interesting ones burned wood scraps.

The Williams Lake Biomass plant is located 300 miles north of Vancouver, BC. An hour flight on a 20-person plane brings you to a remote valley ringed with lumber mills that produce about 15 million tons of softwood lumber every year. The process creates a whole lot of sawdust, which needs disposing of. That’s where the local biomass plant comes in. Rated at 66 MWs, the Williams Lake plant has been on-line since 1993 and consumes 600,00 tons of wood waste. So besides eliminating the mills waste byproducts, electricity is supplied to 52,000 homes. 

The plant runs very efficiently, and the process starts with tractor-trailers that shuttle the sawdust from the local sawmills to the Power Plant. The driver backs his eighteen-wheeler onto a tipper, and the entire truck, including the cab, is tipped up so the saw dust pours out the back and into a conveyor system. From there, the wood-waste is transferred to external piles. Very large dozers push the “fuel” on to belts that bring the wood into the plant, where grates are used to feed the boiler, similar to a coal plant. 

After our safety and “best-practices” audit were finished at the plant, one of the plant operators offered to show us the surrounding mountains.

It’s a beautiful, remote area with big-horned rams, and whole lot of lumber hauling trucks, heading for the mills.