{"id":830534,"date":"2026-07-29T04:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/830534\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T04:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:51:19","slug":"mining-industry-spearheads-energy-transition-at-kalgoorlie-on-edge-of-was-main-power-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/830534\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining industry spearheads energy transition at Kalgoorlie on edge of WA’s main power grid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s biggest gold miner is being asked to carry a larger load to resolve decades of power capacity and reliability woes in WA’s electricity network.<\/p>\n

The owner of Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit gold mine, Northern Star Resources, is negotiating commercial terms with government-owned utility Western Power to supply additional back-up power to the historic mining city.<\/p>\n

Energy Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the plan would ensure there was no repeat of the 2024 blackouts<\/a> which hit the city in the peak of summer, and would help limit outages that have plagued the city for decades.<\/p>\n

A newly signed memorandum of understanding commits<\/a> up to 70 megawatts of electricity supply from the 110-megawatt Parkeston power station at Kalgoorlie, which Northern Star jointly owns with Canadian electricity wholesaler TransAlta.<\/p>\n

It shapes as a transformative deal for Kalgoorlie-Boulder, which sits on the eastern edge of the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), connected via a 655km-long transmission line in place since 1984.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/p>\n

The view down Boulder’s historic Burt Street with the Super Pit gold mine in the background. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n

“We looked at a range of options and models, including government-owned and operated, and we went to market,” Ms Sanderson said.<\/p>\n

“Essentially we enter into an arrangement with Northern Star to use their Parkeston facility, and any excess power.<\/p>\n

“It means should we have any catastrophic event on that main transmission line, we can get that backup running quickly so people don’t experience long-term blackouts.”\"A<\/p>\n

The Parkeston power station is jointly owned by TransAlta and gold miner Northern Star Resources and has fed additional power into the grid during previous outages. (ABC Goldfields: Robert Koenig-Luck)<\/p>\n

Power boost on horizon<\/p>\n

The proposal also includes plans to expand capacity once Northern Star builds a new 140-megawatt thermal power station and a separate 366-megawatt renewable facility, which would include up to 32 wind turbines and 230,000 solar panels.<\/p>\n

Northern Star’s chief technical officer, Steve McClare, said both projects would deliver lower electricity inputs for the $1.6 billion expansion of the Super Pit’s Fimiston Mill.<\/p>\n

“They are in the very final stages, and we are going into that this financial year,” he said.<\/p>\n

The company has forecast expenditure of at least $160 million on the thermal power station, using natural gas and diesel generation.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Steve McClare and Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines general manager Nick Strong overseeing construction of the new Fimiston Mill in 2025. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n

Four outages a month<\/p>\n

It is set to provide a significant boost to power security in the Goldfields, where WA’s peak resources industry body has been calling for “urgent improvements”.<\/p>\n

The Chamber of Minerals and Energy said its Goldfields membership reported an average of four power outages a month during 2025.<\/p>\n

It also estimated wholesale power costs for large industrial customers using the grid have doubled since 2020, rising from about $125 per megawatt-hour to as much as $250 last year.<\/p>\n

The estimate formed part of a public submission to the Economic Regulation Authority, which has been reviewing Western Power’s access arrangements to the grid.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

The mining industry has been calling for “urgent improvements” to the Goldfields energy grid. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n

Among the newest industrial users to connect to the grid was Lynas Rare Earths, which commissioned its Kalgoorlie cracking and leaching plant in late 2024.<\/p>\n

It reported losing the equivalent of one month’s production due to power supply disruptions last November, and continues to be hampered by ongoing outages.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Kalgoorlie gold miner Evolution Mining is assessing plans for a potential wind farm, after losing three days of production during the June quarter due to power outages.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Lynas Rare Earths opened its $800 million cracking and leaching plant at Kalgoorlie in November 2024. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n

Interim Lynas chief executive Pol Le Roux said the number of outages had reduced in recent months, but the company was still weighing up its own off-grid solution.<\/p>\n

“It’s true the power supply is not up to where we want it to be,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The situation has improved, there was some modifications made on the Western Power side.<\/p>\n

“We are staying within one power failure per month, which is not what we wish to have, but it’s what we have; I would say it’s manageable.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Miners say grid reliability has improved in recent months. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)<\/p>\n

Long-term plan for battery<\/p>\n

It comes as the WA government considers applications by more than 20 potential bidders to fulfil Labor’s election promise to build a $150 million vanadium flow battery<\/a> in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.<\/p>\n

Ms Sanderson said the emerging technology could create about 150 local jobs.<\/p>\n

“They’re evaluating all of those business cases that were received and out of that a preferred proponent will be selected, and that’s done by an independent panel with a recommendation to government,” she said.<\/p>\n

Premier Roger Cook has previously said Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s 50-megawatt battery would be operational by 2029, around the same time WA was scheduled to shut the last of its coal-fired power stations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s biggest gold miner is being asked to carry a larger load to resolve decades of power capacity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[186419,64,63,99,263218,40213,29509,66236,403624,129204,66235,403623,403625,258777,66233,258778,45,192476],"class_list":["post-830534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amber-jade-sanderson","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-energy-minister","tag-goldfields-news","tag-grid","tag-kalgoorlie","tag-kalgoorlie-blackouts","tag-kalgoorlie-news","tag-northern-star-resources","tag-parkeston","tag-power-outage-kalgoorlie","tag-south-west-interconnected-system","tag-super-pit","tag-swis","tag-wa-news","tag-western-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830534","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=830534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}