Ground-breaking solar and battery microgrid to double in capacity at WA gold mine

A groundbreaking hybrid solar and battery microgrid installed in 2020 to help power a gold mine in remote Western Australia will have its generation capacity more than doubled, boosting the share of renewables used to power the mine’s operations to 21 per cent.

Global mining giant Gold Fields announced earlier this month that it is expanding the solar farm at its Granny Smith mine, south of Laverton, to a total of 19MW of solar – an increase of 11MW – alongside added capacity through the battery energy storage system.

The upgrades will be carried out by energy services specialist Aggreko, which also developed the mine’s original 8MW solar and 2MW/1MWh battery system and integrated it with the existing 27MW gas plant using its own software platform.

The original Granny Smith solar and battery microgrid is significant for being the first large-scale renewable energy project Gold Fields had completed anywhere in the world, at the time.

Four years later, it has added wind and solar to more than half of its mines around the world, including the Agnew gold mine in WA, which combines five wind turbines (18MW), a 4MW solar farm and a 13MW/4MWh battery to provide between 50-60% of renewables for the mine’s operations.

In March, the mining giant announced it will spend $296 million on 42MW of wind power and 35MW of solar at its St Ives gold mine in Western Australia, in a move it says will slash its current gas-fuelled power bill by two thirds and reduce electricity costs to a third of the previously projected costs by 2025.

Gold Fields says that on completion of the upgrade of the Granny Smith mine’s power system, scheduled for early 2025, the share of the its energy needs generated by renewables will jump from 10-13 per cent to 21 per cent.

“The expanded hybrid power station not only makes our operation more cost efficient and improves energy reliability, it also demonstrates our commitment to accelerate renewable usage across all Gold Fields sites,” said Granny Smith general manager, Mark Glazebrook.

“This is a great step forward in Granny Smith’s decarbonisation journey as we seek to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and deliver on our ESG commitments,” he said.