PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Construction will, this month, start on a 10.6 MW solar power plant at Sandfire Resources' DeGrussa copper mine, in Western Australia.
Formal approval for the A$40-million project, which would be the largest integrated off-grid solar and battery storage facility in Australia, followed the establishment of an extensive international consortium to finance, develop, operate and own the facility.
The plant would be fully operational by 2016 and would provide peak load power to the mining operation.
The project comprised a 10.6 MW solar array using 34 080 solar panels and covered some 20 ha of land. The facility would use single-axis tracking technology, combined with 6 MW short-term battery storage and would be located near the site of the current DeGrussa underground mine. The project would also include a 1.5-million-tonne-a-year concentrator.
The solar power plant would be fully integrated with the existing 19 MW diesel-fired power station at DeGrussa, which is owned and operated by Kalgoorlie Power Systems.
Sandfire had now executed a final power purchase agreement with juwi Renewable Energy, which would develop and operate the solar plant. Sandfire would buy generated power at a fixed rate lower than the historical cost of the diesel-generated power.
The project was expected to achieve savings in the consumption of diesel fuel and would deliver a significant environmental benefit, reducing Sandfire's carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 12 000 t/y.
“We identified some time ago that solar power presented an exciting opportunity for us to participate in a low-risk renewable-energy initiative at DeGrussa, and we have no doubt that this project has the potential to be an Australian and possibly a world first, establishing DeGrussa as a reference site for the use of off-grid solar and battery storage technology in the mining industry,” said Sandfire MD Karl Simich.