Manitoba

This province has far more hydro generation than it can use and exports to the US. Unlike Québec, it plans to meet future requirements with hydro and, except for some interest in biomass, cogeneration is not planned. There is a cogeneration system in a pulp and paper mill in the north.

Saskatchewan

A large fraction of generation is based on lignite but there is some natural gas. A pulp and paper mill in northern Saskatchewan has biomass cogeneration. Saskatchewan Power remains a vertically integrated monopoly, but does buy power from IPP-owned cogeneration systems. ATCO has a combined-cycle system in a potash-processing plant at Cory near Saskatoon.

Husky, a major oil producer, has a heavy oil upgrader in Loydminster on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. TransAlta has worked with Husky to develop the Meridian 450 MW cogeneration system, supplying about 50 kg/second of steam to the upgrader. It uses two GE 85 MW gas turbines and a 45 MW condensing steam turbine. Electricity beyond the steam user requirements is sold to Saskatchewan power under a long-term contract.

Alberta

Prior to restructuring, Alberta had three vertically integrated utilities serving different franchized regions of the province. Two of them, TransAlta and ATCO, are investor-owned. The third, EPCOR, is owned by the city of Edmonton. A large fraction of electricity generation in Alberta is low-cost at surface coal mines. Alberta is also Canada's main natural gas producer.

There are steam turbine cogeneration systems in pulp mills and food-processing plants. The first combined-cycle cogeneration system in Alberta was developed in 1979 at the Dow Chemical Fort Saskatchewan complex near Edmonton. It uses two 70 MW GE gas turbines and two 20 MW back-pressure steam turbines. Both gas turbines have duct burners using some natural gas and some process gases such as hydrogen. Until restructuring this was the only combined-cycle cogeneration system in the province.

Restructuring led to a number of gas turbine cogeneration projects. TransAlta and Air Liquide jointly own a new combined-cycle system recently installed in the Dow plant at Fort Saskatchewan. It uses one 85 MW GE gas turbine and one 40 MW condensing extraction steam turbine. Dow operates the new system under contract with the owners.

There is a great deal of oil refining and petrochemical development near Edmonton. In that region, Air Liquide has built a gas turbine cogeneration system supplying Shell Chemicals at Scotford. ATCO operates a combined-cycle cogeneration system supplying the Shell Scotford refinery using partially processed crude oil from the oil sands near Fort McMurray.

Estimated crude oil reserves in the oils sands of northern Alberta are comparable with those of Saudi Arabia. Some of it is near the surface and is mined before hot water processing. Heating the water is an ideal cogeneration application. The large Syncrude and Suncor synthetic crude refineries in Fort McMurry have large combined-cycle cogeneration systems. Shell mines bitumen near Fort McMurray, partially processes it there, then pumps it to the Scotford refinery near Edmonton where is becomes synthetic crude.

Another form of cogeneration is used for bitumen too deep to be mined economically. High-pressure steam is forced down drill holes to soften the bitumen. The mixture of bitumen and water is then forced to the surface to a processing plant which separates the water. The high-pressure steam is generated in special horizontal-tube HRSGs. The recycled water leaving the processing plant is contaminated, so 20% of it flows through the tubes as water carrying the contaminants with it. The steam then returns to the bitumen.

An ATCO cogeneration system consisting of two 170 MW Siemens Westinghouse gas turbines and one 170 MW steam turbine serves a large petrochemical complex at Joffre, near Red Deer, owned mainly by Nova. The plant is a joint venture between ATCO, EPCOR and NOVA. ATCO manages the plant while Nova and EPCOR contribute staff. There were gas and steam turbines in the huge complex before the new system was built, so NOVA was able to contribute staff with applicable experience. The NOVA operators are sensitive to steam users' requirements and the arrangement has proven to be good.