Tag Archives: Dynamic Energy Transfer

Energy management to become ‘the’ mine electrification talking point

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Running through the three halls at MINExpo 2024 in Las Vegas last month, the electrification theme was everywhere – numerous booths pulled in attendees with battery symbolism or, in some cases, actual electric machines; others presented new concepts, with variations of dynamic trolley being a particular talking point.

While it is clear there is a wider ‘electric’ offering coming to the market, it is also becoming apparent that the discussion must move on from individual electric machine capabilities to the wider infrastructure at hand and how to manage a site’s available energy constraints.

For IM this was crystallised during several meetings around the show, with the two notable examples coming from a discussion with Joachim Braun, Division President at ABB Process Industries, and a presentation from Brian Weller, Vice President of Electrification for Caterpillar.

Real eMine progress

“It is hard to imagine any company being able to sell an electric vehicle without an awareness of how this vehicle will affect a site’s energy balance,” Braun told IM on the final day of the three-day show in Las Vegas. “Part of the equation now is the power management system piece. No operation is going to tolerate a major drop in productivity with the introduction of these new vehicles and increased renewable energy generation.”

ABB has been aware of this for some time, using the backdrop of MINExpo 2021 to launch its eMine™ portfolio of fully integrated electrification and automation systems, covering mine to port.

IM Editor, Dan Gleeson (left), with Division President at ABB Process Industries, Joachim Braun (right)

The company is in the somewhat unique position of serving both OEMs and mine sites with this offering, with the most recent publicised agreements struck with the likes of Komatsu and Hitachi Construction Machinery in the former category, and Codelco and Antofagasta in the latter.

On the availability of renewable energy generation, Braun acknowledged the potential to carry out “power-hungry activities” during the day when solar irradiation might be highest in, say, Australia or Latin America, as one option to consider.

He also expected the introduction of new levels of autonomy and artificial intelligence to play key roles in making decisions on site based on planned activities and the energy required to carry those activities out.

“Whatever happens, there has to be an interaction with the fleet management side of things,” he added.

Stitching it together

Caterpillar is one of those companies looking to sell electric machines, as well as chargers, energy storage systems and other supporting electrical infrastructure, to the mining sector. As Weller made clear during a pre-MINExpo 2024 tour of the company’s Tucson Proving Ground and Tinaja Hills Demonstration and Learning Centre in Arizona, the OEM is working closely with key customers to explore the complexities of managing the power needed to keep electric sites running optimally.

“When we think about the energy balance here, it is not just about consuming energy; it is about where am I getting the energy, and how much and when I am getting this energy,” Weller said during a demonstration of the company’s electric site simulation and modelling capabilities.

This Caterpillar demonstration included a simulated customer site that had 26 battery-electric trucks being charged by six 4-MW stationary charging systems and eight 8-MW Dynamic Energy Transfer (DET) points.

Caterpillar wasn’t the only one showcasing such solutions at MINExpo, with Fortescue highlighting a 6 MW charger and Liebherr Power Rail also being featured. During IM’s conversation with Braun, a high power eMine FastCharge under development was mentioned, as was “more flexible solutions on trolley systems”.

All these new solutions – in addition to some of the existing ones on offer – are high consumers of power.

This was displayed in the simulation Weller played on screen in Arizona, where the site energy transfer capacity related to just the haulage fleet came in at 88 MW.

The energy transfer shown over a 4.5-hour period in this simulation swung from 70 MW capacity at the top end and 5 MW at the low end.

“That 65 MW swing is the equivalent of having a city of 40,000 people turn their light switches on and off,” Weller said for context. “That is the magnitude of the variation the site has to absorb.”

This is where the integration of electrification and autonomy are going to prove vitally important, according to Weller, and is where the “assignment engine” the company is developing, in tandem with its advanced simulation capabilities, is expected to come into the Cat® MineStar™ Fleet management system fold.

“When we look into the mine site of the future, and the idea of electrification and autonomy, it has to all be stitched together,” Weller said.

“We can’t have trucks stop because of a dead battery; we can’t have trucks back up on a haul route waiting for a charger. In some instances, you might be better off coming in for a charge right now – regardless of your state of charge – as in 10 minutes you might have 10 trucks lining up waiting to be charged. How do you know that? You have to tie it to the fleet management system. This enables you to know how much energy you need and how much energy you have to complete your next assignment.”

These tradeoffs will likely impact production, but having a system like the assignment engine Weller highlighted allows the site “to make that decision very dynamically”, he added.

Industry consensus

There were others talking up such integration around MINExpo 2024.

Oliver Weiss, Liebherr Mining Equipment SAS’ Executive Vice President, R&D, Engineering and Production, says control and command of zero emission mining technologies are included in the autonomous haulage system (AHS) the company has been working on with Fortescue.

“The fleet management assignment engine at the core of the AHS monitors fleet energy levels so that jobs and energy replenishment tasks can be assigned efficiently within zero emission fleets equipped with this system,” he said.

Komatsu’s new Modular ecosystem, which builds on the DISPATCH fleet management system, also has an expanding set of interconnected platforms and products built in. Included within this is a new app called “Replenish” to refuel and recharge mining equipment while minimising impacts to production.

Considering ABB and Komatsu recently signed a strategic collaboration agreement to, they said, “jointly develop and bring to market integrated solutions that will help move net-zero emissions for heavy industrial machinery a step closer to reality,” one would expect ABB’s expertise and technologies for automation and electrification to integrate into this new open platform from Komatsu.

It is becoming clear that the energy management paradigm will require mine sites of the future to have even more integrated workflows underlined by higher levels of autonomy.

And it is this understanding that will lead to an accelerated uptake of electric solutions from where the industry is today.

More XE underground loaders on the way, Caterpillar says

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Having additional success selling underground loaders to mining customers, Caterpillar is gearing up to release more machines that leverage that same “architecture” technology as the Cat® R2900 XE diesel-electric LHD, Mike Berry, Vice President and General Manager of Load and Haul for Caterpillar, says.

The diesel-electric R2900 XE is built on the R2900G’s platform, Caterpillar’s most popular underground loader. It features optimised lift arm and component geometry plus load-sensing hydraulics to improve breakout force by 35% over the R2900G, Caterpillar states.

The 18.5-t payload R2900 XE features a switch reluctance electric drive system alongside a Cat C15 diesel engine, which offers up to 335 kW of power. Caterpillar says the machine comes with about 30% increased fuel efficiency compared with the R2900G, with its lower engine revolutions per minute resulting in reduced fuel burn, heat, noise, vibration and exhaust emissions.

These traits have, so far, gone down well. In Australia, there are units at mines owned by Gold Fields, Westgold Resources and MMG. Newmont recently confirmed an order for nine R2900 XEs to the Subika gold mine, in Ghana, while Centamin also added at least one of these LHDs to its underground fleet at Sukari, in Egypt. In Canada, Alamos Gold recently purchased two of these machines for its Young-Davidson mine, while Cementation Americas added the diesel-electric machine to its roster, deploying it at New Gold’s Rainy River project in Ontario, Canada.

Speaking to IM at MINExpo 2024, in Las Vegas, in September, Berry said that the company planned to build on this momentum with more models set to join the platform.

“Similar to rolling out this technology from the surface with the 988 XE wheel loader to this machine [the R2900 XE], yes, we plan to take that technology up and down the underground loader product line,” he said.

Berry’s colleague, Paul Bitter, Product Value Stream Manager at Caterpillar, said the architecture of the XE platform – which also includes a battery-electric loader in the form of the R1700 XE – leaves a “great degree of freedom from a design perspective both for hauling and loading”.

He added: “We see it as platform for loaders and trucks, where, because of the electric drive, you can change power source. This means you can have a diesel machine, a hybrid machine or a fully electric machine.”

The most likely haulage and loading candidates for the ‘XE treatment’ are machines that currently only come in diesel form, have not recently been updated and have large populations out in the field.

On the theme of hybridisation, Berry said the company had no plans to combine the electric drivetrain with a small diesel energy and an on-board energy storage element for load and haul equipment. He and colleague Thad Litkenhus, Director of Product Management at Caterpillar, did raise the prospect of a form of the Dynamic Energy Transfer (DET) solution currently equipped for surface haul trucks being converted for underground use, however.

Designed to both transfer energy to large mining trucks, as well as charge a machine’s batteries while operating with increased speed on grade, the system “provides the industry with options to support both near-term and long-term sustainability strategies”, Caterpillar says.

Litkenhus added: “We define hybrid as having multiple energy sources and, if you think about the fundamental notion of a DET system, that is effectively a hybridisation of your machine to bring more energy to the machine. It just happens to be an off-board one.

“We actually think such a combination could provide the hybrid element that diversifies the power source without any drawbacks that come with having it all happen on board the machine.”

BHP to trial Cat Dynamic Energy Transfer solution at Escondida

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BHP is the first customer to announce plans to trial Caterpillar Inc.’s Cat® Dynamic Energy Transfer (DET) system on battery electric and diesel electric mining trucks at BHP sites.

Caterpillar announced the launch of the Cat DET solution last week ahead of displaying a Cat 798 AC with a DET attachment at MINExpo 2024, this week. The technology can transfer energy to both diesel-electric and battery-electric large mining trucks while they are working around a mine site. It can also charge an electric haul truck’s batteries while the machine is on the move, and the system’s infrastructure is flexible, which allows it to be easily relocated when compared with current commercialised offerings, including large, fixed overhead trolleys.

The planned trials are the result of over two years of close collaboration between BHP and Caterpillar to find sustainable and viable energy transfer solutions. The trials include validating the solution in BHP Iron ore and Copper businesses, including CAT 793 fleet at Jimblebar and CAT 798 fleet at Escondida. BHP also intends to trial Cat DET as an integrated system with Cat autonomous solutions.

BHP announced in 2021 a collaboration with Caterpillar to deploy zero-exhaust emissions mining trucks at BHP sites to reduce operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enabling more hands-on learning opportunities to ensure successful deployment at BHP sites. The collaboration has helped shape the processes, technology and infrastructure that will be required to support diesel-electric and battery-electric mining trucks and the mine sites of the future, the company says.

BHP’s Chief Commercial Officer, Ragnar Udd (right), said: “We are pleased to be able to trial the DET technology that Caterpillar has developed, and it is a welcome addition in our plans to enable zero-emissions mining truck deployment at BHP. Innovation and technology will play a crucial role as we work towards BHP’s goal of net zero operational emissions by 2050, and we are determined to keep building partnerships like this to achieve this objective.

“This collaboration is testament of our commitment to find solutions that are sustainable and viable – for us and the broader industry.”

Denise Johnson (left), Caterpillar Group President, said: “BHP has been part of our Early Learner program from the beginning, providing valuable feedback. We look forward to continuing that collaboration as we work together to trial the Cat DET system on both diesel-electric and battery-electric trucks at BHP’s sites. This is an important next step to validate the crucial energy management solutions needed to support not only BHP and Caterpillar, but also the broader mining industry.”