The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced a $10 million grant to global mining company, Fortescue, to develop, build and demonstrate ‘first of a kind’ fast chargers for heavy mine site vehicles.
Awarded under the Australian Government’s $400 million Industrial Transformation Stream – part of the Powering the Regions Fund – the grant and larger program aim to support emissions reduction at existing industrial facilities in regional Australia.
Fortescue’s $35.3 million ‘Fast Charger for Heavy Battery Electric Vehicles’ project will develop six megawatt fast chargers capable of charging 240-tonne battery electric trucks in less than half an hour.
ARENA CEO, Darren Miller, said the project will greatly contribute to reducing emissions in mining, one of Australia’s most carbon-intensive industries.
“ARENA is working to reduce emissions from Australia’s heavy industry, with heavy haulage high on the priority list for the mining sector,” he said.
“Heavy haulage for remote mine sites contributes around a quarter of the mining industry’s emissions and is considered a hard-to-abate sector, so we’re investing in the technologies that will be part of the solution.”
The project is the next stage of fast charger development for Fortescue, building on an existing three megawatt prototype.
Once developed, the fast charger will be installed, demonstrated and tested at Fortescue’s Hazelmere and Christmas Creek mine sites in Western Australia.
“If the fast charger can be successfully validated at the operational Christmas Creek mine site, we’d like to see the technology widely deployed across Australia’s resource industry,” Miller said.
“These are the kinds of challenges ARENA is looking to address through the Industrial Transformation Stream.”
The fast charger will be developed with global charging system standardisation in mind, ensuring compatibility with any equipment that meets the connector standard across mining, rail and other heavy industry applications.
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