How incremental mine hybridization reduces risks and improves the business case

The desire to decarbonize mining operations to meet the demand for a greener resource product plus the fact that renewable energy is now lower in cost compared to fossil fuel, drives a new focus to accelerate the transition.

The key technologies in this transition are grid stabilizing as well as integration control and optimization using a combination of solar, wind, virtual synchronous machines, storage and load control.

• The different pathways and options on decarbonizing existing or new mining operations using hybrid systems.
• How employing energy monitoring and management systems can help reduce costs and increase efficiency.
• Examples of references and use cases that have been operating in the mining industry for some time.

Juergen Zimmerman heads Business Development and Technology for Hitachi Hitachi Energy’s Grid Edge & Microgrid Solutions Business in Australia and New Zealand and has been involved in the development and construction of microgrids for over 30 years. Juergen is responsible for developing new projects and innovative solutions for offgrid as well as grid connected microgrids, including those that use grid forming inverters to stabilize large power systems with high renewable energy penetration.

Stephen Sproul is a Chartered Engineer with 10 years’ of experience across the power industry in Australia and other leading renewable markets around the world. Stephen has commissioned energy storage systems across Queensland to integrate renewables and defer network reinforcement, and designed microgrid control systems with Hitachi Energy’s Global R&D team in Italy. He has developed tools to interconnect multi-megawatt wind farms in Scotland and helped foster and refine energy storage markets and interconnection rules in California.

Stephen is currently a senior engineer with Hitachi Energy. He works closely with customers to implement microgrid and energy storage solutions, achieve better commercial outcomes and support the clean energy transition through the application of new technologies.