In early May, the facility ran for more than six and a half days running entirely on renewables \u2013 from its 27 MW of solar, 24 MW of wind, and the 15 MW, 33 MWh of battery that stores excess output and sends it back to the micro-grid when needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a significant milestone, not only for the project, but for what is possible in the Australian energy sector and demonstrating nation-leading progress in renewable energy for remote mining operations,\u201d Zenith Energy, which built the hybrid power station, wrote in a LinkedIn post.
\u00a0
\u201cThe system is designed to meet at least 80% of site energy needs from renewables, and moments like this show what that looks like in practice \u2013 especially with the right weather conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bellevue Gold already claims to be the world\u2019s first net zero emissions gold mine (scope 1 and scope 2), although it achieves some of this with offsets, and is yet to decarbonise its mining equipment and transport, as Fortescue is aiming to do by 2030 at its much bigger iron ore operations in the Pilbara, where the average load is 800 MW.<\/p>\n
Still, the new record for \u201cengines off\u201d is believed to be a world first at such a facility relying on wind and solar as the major source of power, and beats the achievements of the much smaller Kings Island mini-grid off the coast of Tasmania, where the average load is around 2.5 MW.<\/p>\n
A number of different off-grid mines are achieving very high level of renewables \u2013 usually much higher than predicted \u2013 with Lynas Gold achieving a record 95.7 per cent renewable share over the entire March quarter at its Mt Weld lithium mine.<\/p>\n
Another lithium miner, the Kathleen Valley facility operated by Liontown Resources, has also achieved high share of renewables above 80 per cent on a consistent monthly basis, shielding it from the recent surge in diesel prices.<\/p>\n
Both Lynas Gold and Liontown are backed by Gina Rinehart, Australia\u2019s richest person, and one of its most ardent anti-renewable campaigners.<\/p>\n
If you would like to join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, please\u00a0click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you wish to support independent media, and accurate information, please consider making a one off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Renew Economy. Please click here. Your support is invaluable.<\/a> Giles Parkinson is founder and editor-in-chief of Renew Economy<\/a>, and founder and editor of its EV-focused sister site The Driven<\/a>. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast<\/a>. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bellevue gold mine in a remote part of Western Australia is claiming another major record after completing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,348462,75,952,128],"class_list":["post-718598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bellevue-gold","tag-environment","tag-featured","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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