Renewables push silencing miners’ diesel generators – Weekend Australian

Renewables push silencing miners’ diesel generators – Weekend Australian   |   24th April 2019

Cost savings opportunities for miners

There was some great coverage in The Weekend Australian of the cost saving opportunity for miners who include renewables in their energy supply mix.  One of our Principal Consultants, Emily Alford, was interviewed and made the following key points:

• “We’ve got to a stage now with renewables where the commercial benefit outweighs any social licence consideration.  Renewable generation is becoming a no-brainer from a cost and economic point of view…. If you’re burning diesel you’re burning cash, and on the east cost if you’re burning gas you’re burning cash.”
• “[The drop in the cost of solar plant] has had a significant impact  on economic evaluations of renewable power options. […] We’ve done a number of evaluations now looking at power supply options for off-grid mining projects and every time a thermal plus renewables mix is cheaper than just thermal.”
• ‘Ms Alford said that the main barrier to the installation of solar power was no longer cost, it was outdated procurement processes that did not take changes in the power industry into consideration. “Part of the problem is that some miners are still in the habit of treating the procurement of a power station as [an] engineering project… They’ll go to an engineering house, who will design what they think a power station should look like, and the miner will go to market and price the design.” Ms Alford said the process was being run the wrong way round. “That stops vendors being able to offer options that may be better for the miner, and which bring new technologies into the frame.”’

Oakley Greenwood provide advice, experience and knowledge in the commercial and technical aspects of designing, running and evaluating a tender process for remote and off-grid power solutions.  Contact us today for a confidential discussion on how to get the best power outcome for your operations.