Renewable energy sources – a promising opportunity for remote mine sites?

Abstract

Mining industry is a substantial consumer of the energy indispensable to power mining and mineral processing equipment and processes. As more and more mine operations move to remote locations, the access to reliable, secure and environment friendly energy sources becomes a key concern. At present, a great majority of remote mines relies heavily on diesel fuel that has to be transported over long distances. In this context, some of the renewable energy sources such as for example wind power or solar energy seem to provide potentially interesting and viable alternatives. Mine operations however, have a very particular character, much different from other industries and from other potential applications of renewable power sources. This paper presents operational conditions of some mining operations, particularly those in remote regions, in the context of their energy needs. The authors analyse current and future capacities to decrease a reliance of remote mines on conventional fuels and energy. The paper analyses and discusses also the conditions to be met by alternative energy sources so that they might become a viable alternative for remote mining operations.

On the design of complex energy systems: Accounting for renewables variability in systems sizing

“…These results suggest that signicant oversizing is required to obtain a fully reliable design and highlights the problem with worst case designs for regions with large renewables variability. Given that the average lifetime of a remote mine is typically about 15 to 20 years (Paraszczak and Fytas, 2012;Carvalho et al, 2014), such high system reliabilities may not be critical.…”

“…Problems with greenhouse emissions, fuel transport safety and the ever-uctuating cost of fuels have driven mining operations to seek alternative sources of energy. Local generation from renewables is a possible solution to the energy problem (Paraszczak and Fytas, 2012). However, doubts exist about renewables-based energy systems due to the variable and intermittent nature of the resources, and these doubts have limited their use as the main source of energy in large-scale continuous processes.…”

Optimal design of hybrid energy systems incorporating stochastic renewable resources fluctuations

“…The mining industry accounts for a significant portion of this energy demand. Mining operations involve several energy intensive processes such as drilling, excavation and blasting [53], and energy costs have been shown to represent between 15-21% of the total cost of production in the mining industry [45,67]. The rising demand for metals around the world, coupled with the depletion of readily accessible ore deposits, has led to mining operations moving to more remote locations where they often face significant energy problems since grid electricity is usually unavailable.…”

Computational fluid dynamic modelling of the Frood-Stobie ice stope thermal storage for mine ventilation heating

“…This creates a situation where the air would be required to be heated at the surface and cooled down underground, resulting in a high proportion of the energy consumed in the mine dedicated towards conditioning of the ventilation air. So achieving adequate air conditioning of deep mines all year round could be very costly, especially if these are in remote locations with energy derived from diesel generators/boilers (Paraszczak & Fytas 2012). This paper will outline the potential of ice stopes, a natural thermal storage system, for provision of the heating and cooling loads in underground mines located in subarctic climates.…”