The Sundance power facility is situated on the south shore of Wabamun Lake, approximately 40 miles (70 km) west of Edmonton, Alberta. The power plant has a total generation capacity of 2,071MW.
The plant comprises six units, which include units 1 and 2 which started rolling in 1970 and 1973 respectively with a capacity of 280MW each, Unit 3 that commenced operations in 1976 and Unit 5, in 1978, with a capacity of 353MW each, Unit 4 that began services in 1977 and Unit 6 in 1980 has a generating capacity of 406MW each.
TransAlta closed operations of Unit 3 at the plant on June 3, 2009, it is expected to be back in the third quarter. The company informed that it would close operations at Unit 5 in the third and fourth quarters. All the other units were available for service. One MW of power supplied from the plant can serve approximately 1,000 homes in Alberta.
The Sundance facility uses around 9 million tonnes of coal per year, which is mined from the TransAlta’s Highvale Mine.
On its website, TransAlta informed that it has power purchase agreements for Units 1 and 2 of the plant from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2017, and for the rest of the units from until December 31, 2020. In addition to the above, 44MW from Unit 6 and 53MW from Unit 4 are added to the Alberta Power Pool, through the PPA Buyers.
TransAlta, owns and operates approximately 8,000MW of generating capacity and sells energy commodities in the US, Canada, Australia and Mexico.
