The municipal biodigester owned by Georgian Bluffs and Chatsworth should be producing electricity for the grid within two weeks.
Georgian Bluffs Council was told Wednesday that Hydro One needs the contractor to produce an engineer’s report that states all the relays in the system work as designed.
Operations Manager Rick Winters says one final relay switch was delivered to the site on Wednesday.
Once it is installed, tested and certified — Hydro One is expected to allow electricity generation to begin.
Winters says the target date is January 17th, provided all the tests go as planned.
Georgian Bluffs Mayor Alan Barfoot says the approval process has been lengthy but that’s to be expected since this is the first municipally owned biodigester in Ontario.
Barfoot adds many other municipalities from around the province are watching to see what is happening and how it’s coming about.
The 3.8 million dollar facility has been receiving organic material and producing methane gas since early November.
The gas will operate a generator that is expected to create the electricity – up to 24 hundred kilowatt hours per day.
The methane gas production is also removing the pathogens from the organic material, which will allow the material to be put back into the earth.
Georgian Bluffs and Chatsworth built the biodigester south of Kilsyth with financial help from the federal and provincial governments.
The townships expect that revenues from tipping fees and electricity sales will allow them to pay off their portions of the cost — slightly more than one million dollars apiece — within eight years.
