WA mine switches to solar in race to produce battery-grade lithium

The Earl Grey Lithium Project has become the latest Western Australia mine to add solar to its design, a late-stage switch to renewables with construction on the project already underway.

Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority this week threw its support behind changes to add a 12MW solar plant to the site.

The plant will consist of 27,000 solar PV panels in order to provide about 25 per cent of the total power supply requirements of the processing plant.

Half-owned by Wesfarmers, the project is resurrecting an abandoned underground gold mine at Mt Holland in southern-central Western Australia as an open cut battery-grade lithium mine. It is one of the largest undeveloped lithium deposits in the country.

Earl Grey Lithium’s solar plant comes alongside other modifications including changing the air strip, including a refinery waste disposal system, and altering exclusion areas for vulnerable banksia and ground-dwelling malleefowl by clearing an extra 56 hectares of bushland.

Flight to solar

With fuel prices forecast to rise again after OPEC’s controversial decision to cut supplies this week, more and more mines are turning off diesel generators and towards renewables to power remote sites.

This year alone two gold mines and two lithium mines have announced the inclusion of solar to support mining operations.

Liontown ​​Resources will build Australia’s largest off-grid wind-solar battery storage power station for a mining operation to power its Kathleen Valley lithium mine, with 95 MW plant, and Pilbara Minerals commissions its 6 MW solar generator later this year for its Pilgangoora lithium project.

Bellevue Gold is claiming it will mine “green gold” by installing a 13 MW renewables and battery system, while Northern Star added a 5 MW solar array to its Kalgoorlie gold mine, cutting some 5,600 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions a year.