VoltVision, a UK-based specialist in digitised industrial power networks, says it has completed the first phase of a program to digitise the power networks at Endeavour Mining’s six West African gold mines.

The project has been designed to help maximise the efficiency of Endeavour’s electrical power systems, enabling it to improve power quality, increase uptime and reduce CO2 emissions, while lowering energy consumption and operating costs, VoltVision said.

Endeavour has identified significant power efficiency gains and cost savings as the project has been rolled out. VoltVision has progressed to Phase 2 of the roll-out, which is focusing on condition monitoring, failure prevention and further power reduction analysis.

Back In May 2022, VoltVision announced that the first phase of a pioneering energy efficiency and operational enhancement project at Endeavour Mining’s Houndé Mine in Burkina Faso had been completed.

VoltVision says its V-Cube data modules represent the only commercially available electrical data analytics system in the mining industry able to be both installed, operated and managed remotely, requiring no site visits from Voltvision personnel.

Manoli Yannaghas, VoltVision Managing Director, said: “Because our technology is plug-and-play, Phase 1 was installed successfully by Endeavour’s own engineers, without any site visits from us or disruption to production. It also proved its suitability for remote and hostile environments.”

VoltVision’s digitisation program works by retrofitting its V-Cube data modules to virtually any electrical asset, connecting them to the cloud and VoltVision’s ViVid platform. The V-Cube extracts detailed system and/or asset performance data 24/7, which is then stored in the cloud, reducing the cost of in-situ historians databases, the company says. Its advanced analytical capabilities convert this data into actionable information for use by management teams, which is available through dashboards and alerts.

Yannaghas added: “Digitising industrial power networks, including high voltage, can deliver immediate savings of up to 15% of annual static energy costs, plus a host of benefits including greater reliability and lower carbon emissions.

“Our solution converts previously stranded assets into actively monitored elements of a cloud-based IoT system capable of analysing massive amounts of data with minimal infrastructure investment. This gives users unprecedented visibility of power consumption, quality, emissions and costs, so they can make intelligence-based management decisions.”