Leading solar PV manufacturer and developer First Solar says it expects the first pilot projects featuring solar arrays in a mining operation will be announced soon, and 200MW of solar could be installed at remote mining projects in Australia within the next few years.
“We expect to see 100-200MW of solar at remote mining projects over the next 3 years,” said Jack Curtis, the company’s head of business development in the Asia Pacific. “The interest and demand exists (but) it is definitely contingent on some pilot projects being delivered.”
Those pilot projects are likely to be delivered with the help of either the Australian Renewable Energy Agency or the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, or both. ARENA has made remote solar/hybrid installations a major focus of its funding strategy, although the exact status of its funding resources is in doubt.
Curtis indicated that the first pilot projects could be announced within the next few months, although he gave few other details, other than to suggest they would be in the range of a “few hundred kilowatts”.
The ideal size for a mining project could be between 5-10MW, he said, indicating that if the 200MW is to be filled, then there could be several dozen such installations.
First Solar built Australia’s first utility scale solar plant – a 10MW facility near Geraldton, and is also building Australia’s largest arrays at Nyngan (102MW) and Broken Hill (53MW).
“It’s a pretty meaningful amount of volume,” Curtis told RenewEconomy in an interview. “But it hinges on a few things happening.
“There is acceptance that these things work, and the industry has banged on about solar playing role in mining off grid sector for a while.
“It can make financial sense … but the industry hasn’t yet overcome the binary obstacle, which is convincing a very conservative procurement entity such as mining companies that this new technical solution doesn’t interrupt power supply to the mines.”
Curtis says the catalyst will be a couple of pilot projects. He estimates that miners may go for 10-30 per cent penetration in a diesel-powered setting, although in reality solar could provide up to 70 per cent of such a plant’s needs in the right conditions. In those cases, the solar array would likely be bigger than 10MW, depending n the size of the mining project.
First Solar is not the only company looking at the mining industry for development potential. Other solar PV firms are also looking at the market, as are solar thermal with storage firms such as SolarReserve, which recently opened a Perth office.
Meanwhile, First Solar, in conjunction with ARENA and project owner AGL, has produced some interesting data showing the level of local industry engagement in the $440 million solar projects.
It says that apart from the 450 jobs in construction, some 56.3 per cent of the procurement for the project is done through local industry. This includes a whole range of site preparation activities, posts, module and cable installation, as well as electrical work.
The total value of local subcontractor procurement for services provided on the Nyngan and Broken Hill projects is over $76 million.
IXL, which has built mounting systems, says it has historically been dependant on the local automotive industry to support its steel fabrication business, but it is opening a new manufacturing facility in Adelaide this month that will produce and supply structural components for the solar projects.
