More news on the Charge On Innovation Challenge as it was formally launched today and founding patrons BHP, Rio Tinto, and Vale outline their reasons for getting behind the venture, an Austmine facilitated “global competition for technology innovators to develop new concepts for large-scale haul truck electrification systems to help significantly cut emissions from surface mine operations and unlock safety, productivity, and operational improvements.” The three mining majors added the Challenge “is expected to attract additional interest from resource companies that maintain substantial haul truck fleets and are looking for innovative concepts to deliver electricity to large battery-electric haul trucks.​”

Current stationary charging systems require substantial time to charge large trucks, which would result in significant lost productivity. The miners said the industry needs multi-megawatt scale fast charging concepts capable of delivering around 400 kWh to charge (and propel) a truck within the truck’s haul cycle (load, travel, dump, return, queue).

“METS and mining companies are united on the Challenge to reduce emissions across the supply chain,” said Austmine CEO Christine Gibbs Stewart. “With 80% of METS companies supplying products and services outside mining, the Challenge leverages the experience and innovation of industries in the automotive, battery makers, aerospace, defence and other sectors. We are confident that we will find a solution to the delivery of electricity to trucks in the complex operating environment of a large surface mine. We expect the Challenge will attract companies from a broad range of sectors including mining, automotive, aerospace, agriculture, and defence to deliver selected charging concepts to create a standard product that can interface with all trucks.”

President of BHP Minerals Australia Edgar Basto said: “We expect the Challenge will stimulate innovative ideas, some of which could be immediately applied to existing diesel-electric equipment and help fast-track implementation of longer-term solutions. We understand that these challenges will not be solved overnight, but together we can find the best concepts that can be applied across the industry.”

Rio Tinto Group Executive Safety, Technical and Projects Mark Davies said: “This is a global call-out to innovators to change the way haul truck systems operate in the mining sector. Innovation is the key to decarbonisation, and we expect the Challenge will deliver exciting new concepts that could drive huge long-term benefits for our industry and the environment. Partnerships and collaborations across a diverse range of sectors can drive significant technological change. This is an important, industry-wide approach that has potential to create new jobs and opportunities for suppliers, both globally and locally.”

Carlos Mello, Ferrous Engineering Director of Vale said: “Mine electrification requires considerable integration between mine planning and operations. We need to develop new charging solutions that can be incorporated into our operations in parallel to the development of battery trucks, to ensure we create a truly sustainable electric haulage system in all aspects – clean, competitive and flexible.”

The statement added that in addition to providing a zero-carbon energy source, the conversion of mobile mining equipment to battery electric can potentially unlock value, as electric motors have fewer moving parts when compared to standard equipment. “Several non-traditional mining sector vendors are actively developing technologies that can be applied to mine electrification. The Challenge is expected to demonstrate an emerging market for charging solutions in mining, accelerate commercialisation of solutions, and integrate innovations from other industries into the mining sector.”

The Challenge Expression of Interest process will open on Tuesday, 18 May, and candidates who make the short list are expected to pitch their concepts later during this calendar year.

To get some more insight into the Challenge, IM spoke to some key representatives from the founding patrons including Scott Davis, Lead Innovation – Minerals Australia BHP who is the Challenge lead, and Robert Trzebski, Austmine Director – International Business.

Q With GMG’s Battery Electric group and The Electric Mine Consortium, why did you feel a new initiative was needed – was it to focus on the haul truck charging issue specifically?

There are a number of groups focussing more broadly on equipment electrification, and charging battery-electric equipment to reduce emissions. The Electric Mine Consortium is focussed on underground mining and GMG is focused on guidelines and not technology development, whereas under the Charge On Innovation Challenge, the founding patrons wanted to focus specifically on how to delivery energy to large haul trucks in surface mines. Current technology for transferring energy to the battery electric haul truck either negatively impacts productivity or is operationally constraining.  Surface mines need a better solution.

Q Was it the result of the mining companies approaching Austmine with the idea or vice versa or a collective push?

The Founding Patrons have a common vision that in-cycle charging is the biggest obstacle for competitive adoption of battery trucks.  As BHP has an existing strategic partnership with Austmine to identify and develop opportunities to innovate at its operations, that partnership was leveraged to create a platform to allow other mining companies to participate, and to source innovation globally from multiple sectors so that we bring diverse thinking to mining industry challenges. The Founding Patrons share a common need for a solution to this challenge and we believe the rest of the surface mining industry does also.  

Q Assuming the major miners are also working directly with the big mining truck OEMs, was the feeling that no single OEM solution was going to work with most mines having mixed fleets?

The Founding Patrons feel it is important that the industry aims for development of standardised charging interfaces that can be used for trucks from different manufacturers in order to maximise value and efficiencies.  Also, we don’t know what we don’t know so we want to seek concepts from everyone, including the OEMs. OEMs are a very important stakeholder group, and we see many possibilities for how charging concepts can be commercialised involving a variety of commercial arrangements between OEMs, miners and new entrants, following the Charge On Innovation Challenge. We encourage all OEMs to participate in the challenge and see this as an opportunity for them to put forward new ideas. Austmine will also be facilitating potential joint submissions to enable smaller companies with an innovative part solution to team up with other companies in order to present more complete solutions.

Q Is there any timeline to first trials or concepts?

Each Patron will be operating to their own individual needs and timelines, but collectively we see a need for action and so ideally we want to see technologies commercialise rapidly. It would be great to see technologies be ready for mine site testing in the next few years.