Are You Mining Smart?

There is no doubt that mining takes energy. It has always been so. When Cornish miner John Deason found the Welcome Stranger in February 1869, he had expended almost a lifetime of it. At 10am, when digging just 3cm below the surface, he unearthed the 2,380 ounce (67kg) gold nugget in central Victoria in Australia, and he dragged the nugget to his unpowered hut some 100 feet away and burned it for 10 hours in the fire. After breaking some 35 kg of quartz from it, the final unblemished discovery was on display. It was sold for an amount equivalent to $3.5M in today's dollars.

Manpower, fire and years have now been replaced by electrons, with mining now one of the most energy intensive businesses in the world, consuming around 500 petajoules of energy per annum in Australia alone. Intensity differs widely; coal is estimated at 50kWh/tonne for coal, 11KWh/tonne for minerals and 55kWh/tonne for metals, with the majority of energy consumed by mobile diesel equipment, processing plants, refineries and smelters. Within metals, intensity ranges from 13kWh/tonne for bauxite to 210kWh/tonne for gold. This is predicted to rise in future years – average grades have halved and over burden doubled over the last 30 years.

There has been little innovation in providing energy to mines, with mining operations relying on fossil fuels to run equipment and electricity for processing, even more so in remote areas which tend to utilise diesel power generation. In Australia the mining sector derives 41% of its energy from diesel, with grid supplied electricity a mixture of coal, natural gas and to a lesser extent renewables. Before 2005, the idea of powering mines with solar energy would have been ridiculous. In 2005, the cost of solar was around USD$10/watt; it is now less than USD$0.20/watt. 

Solo Patea La Montana

We need not pretend we are on new ground with the idea of powering mines with renewables. It is both established and accepted globally. Mines represent one third of the total power usage in Chile, for example, with activity centred in the Atacama Desert where miners say you can find copper just by kicking the mountain. According to Bloomberg, these days of easy prospecting are gone, with energy intensity rising with every foot of exploration. To combat rising fossil fuel energy, in 2013, the Chilean Government passed a law mandating that 20% of its energy be from renewable sources. It has been effective - by 2017, Chile was producing 14% of its power from renewables, and it recently set a target of 50% by 2050. Mining companies around the world are now following suit. 

It is no longer enough, however, to ask whether mines should use more renewables. The world is changing rapidly and no more so than in the options available for grids and microgrids.  It is time we acknowledged the technological revolution in digital and completely remapped the supply of mine sites.

Bringing the New Technological Frontier in Energy, to Mining

The revolution occurring in the supply of electricity globally centres around five key drivers, all of which can change forever the economics and efficiency of mining.  These are:

• The Internet of things is bringing with it a new world of information through IoT networks, reactive sensors and autonomous grids, providing new and large amounts of data and information to mining companies around assets, processes and people. 
• New dimensions, for example augmented or virtual reality and gesture control services, are changing the way that staff are trained, assets are maintained and works are conducted.
• Artificial intelligence is capturing data, identifying patterns, devising autonomous actions and then executing on these, for example in taking the data from sensors, understanding when power or assets is required, and then providing that power or asset. 
• Liquid applications such as seamless interfaces, conversational robots or API gateways are allowing applications to be composed rather than built, bringing speed to companies from idea to implementation.  
• Robotics, for example the driverless vehicles already used extensively in the mining industry, provide partial or full actions based on pattern recognition and action. 
• Blockchain, through distributed ledger technologies or cryptocurrency, provide companies with the ability to explore new fractional ownership models, taking parts of assets for example and establishing new and different methods of ownership and new returns to equity. Taken together, however, and applied to the problem of how to power mining sites in a new, efficient and innovative way, it is now possible to take the concept of the mining site microgrid much further than ever before.

The Era of the Smart Mine?

One of the criticisms of smart cities are that the range and diversity of interests, ownership and variances in willingness to pay make integrated construction difficult.  Not so with the concept of the smart mine, where singular purpose, ownership and success criteria exists.  With such alignment, we can bring to life a future of integrated, linked, thinking and responsive systems, to bring new technologies that are transforming the power grids of today into the mining sites of tomorrow. This is the era of convergence, where real estate, mining, automotive, technology and utilities can be brought together cohesively through the lens of the employee, the operator and the shareholder. The truly smart mine is not far away.  

Have any interesting examples, observations and case studies around the new age of energy in mining? Leave your comments below.