PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Dual listed gold miner Perseus has spent $3.3-million on four new diesel driven generators to combat expected power cuts at its Edikan gold mine, in Ghana.
Perseus and five other international mining companies accepted a 25% reduction in their electricity allocation from the Ghanaian national power grid in December last year, as the country struggles to meet demand.
The miner told shareholders on Friday that once installed on site, the four generators would be able to generate sufficient power to fully compensate for the power that Perseus would be unable to draw from the national grid.
Taking into account the estimated delivery and installation time, the generators should ensure that the Edikan processing plant would be able to operate unimpeded by power disruptions from around mid April onwards.
Perseus warned that gold production from Edikan would be reduced by around one-third for the next seven weeks, and would likely perform above forecast levels once the generators were installed.
Meanwhile, Perseus had also started studying a range of alternative longer-term energy solutions designed to provide the Edikan mine with a secure supply of power that was not reliant on the national electricity grid.
In the event that the generators were no longer needed on the Edikan site, they could be redeployed as the primary energy source for the Sissingué gold mine, in Cote d’Ivoire.