Off-grid gold miner achieves record renewables with 101 consecutive hours with engines off

Western Australia gold miner Bellevue has claimed a new record for renewables production at an off-grid facility, saying it had achieved 101 consecutive hours of 100 per cent renewables and with its fossil fuel engines off.

The new achievement, reached earlier this month, beats the previous record of 84 hours reported on this web site in September, and is believed to be a record for any off-grid facility of this size.

Bellevue Gold has installed one of the world’s biggest off-grid arrays, with 24 megawatts (MW) of wind, 27 megawatts of solar and a 15 MW, 30 MWh battery, supported by 9 MW of diesel capacity and 15 MW of gas capacity. It has an average load of 12 MW from its mining and processing facilities.

The wind turbines only started production in May, but the company has already achieved months of more than 90 per cent average renewables penetration.

“Renewable energy penetration is currently sitting comfortably at the upper end of the targeted renewable energy penetration rate of 80-90 per cent, and aligned to the forecast of being the most renewably powered off-grid mine in Australia,” the company said in a statement to the ASX on Thursday.

“The December 2025 quarter should see further benefit from higher contributions from the solar farm and wind farm, as we head into summer, which is also the windiest period of the year. This is expected to further reduce the use of diesel and LNG in the power station.”

Bellevue Gold is one of a number of off-grid miners who are achieving high levels of renewables with their newly installed wind, solar and battery hybrid systems.

Liontown Resources, backed by Australia’s richest person and arch renewables critic Gina Rinehart, has claimed monthly penetration rates of more than 80 per cent wind and solar at its Kathleen Valley lithium mine.

Further south, North Star Resources has outlined plans for a massive wind, solar and battery facility to deliver at least 70 per cent renewables to its giant edge-of-grid Super Pit operations near Kalgoorlie.

Bellevue Gold is also claiming to the world’s first “net zero” gold mine – which turns out to be important for its customers as well as a money-saver. It achieves this through the high levels of renewables, and through certified carbon offsets.

“No one has thought to put out a net zero gold product before, and we’ve put our money where our mouth is in terms of building a modern operation, changing our mining practices to reduce carbon emissions, and putting in an industry-leading renewable energy power station,” says CEO Darren Stralow.

Bellevue is also pioneering traceable “green gold” through separate refining and advancing Indigenous partnerships and workforce diversity across its operations, an initiative that helped it win the environmental sustainability award at the AIM WA Pinnacle Awards.

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