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Juwi Awarded Contract to Build World's Largest Offgrid Solar Hybrid Project in Mining Industry

Wörrstadt, Germany - Hybrid power solutions offer the potential to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels in off-grid environments. At the same time, they produce reliable electricity at competitive prices. As such, they lend themselves to supporting the decarbonization of the resource industry.

The Juwi Group will build and integrate the world's largest offgrid hybrid project in the mining industry with a solar farm and battery storage system around 30 kilometers southwest of the Egyptian port city of Marsa Alam. To this end, the 36-megawatt (MW) solar farm and a 7.5-MW battery storage system will be integrated into the existing diesel power plant at the Sukari Gold Mine. The Cape Town based subsidiary of German renewable energy specialist juwi AG and the owner of the Sukari Gold Mine Centamin plc have agreed on this. Juwi will plan the hybrid power plant, purchase the components and integrate it into the existing power plant infrastructure with the specially developed Juwi Hybrid IQ Controller. Juwi will also take over the technical operational management. The power plant is scheduled to go into operation in the second quarter of 2022, located just inland from the coast on the Red Sea.

According to Juwi, the renewable energy component of the hybrid power plant will enable the Centamin project to reduce diesel consumption by around 22 million liters per year and CO2 emissions by around 60,000 tons per year. As in the construction of southern Europe's largest solar park in Kozani, Greece, Juwi is also using bifacial solar modules for the project in Egypt. Compared to standard modules, bifacial modules have the advantage that they use the solar energy on the front and back side. This makes them more efficient and leads to a higher electricity yield on the same area.

"We look forward to assisting Centamin to reduce carbon emissions and cost of power to the Sukari Gold Mine", said Dave Manning, Director Global Hybrid at Juwi. He added that the project impressively demonstrates the environmental and economic benefits that mining companies derive from hybrid projects in Africa. At the same time, the reliability of the power supply increases and the operator hedges against rising fuel prices.

Five more hybrid solutions under construction in Australia and South Africa

In addition to the development and operational management of wind and solar farms, the construction of hybrid power plants for non-grid industries, such as mines, is an important growth segment for the Juwi Group. The PV and/or wind power plants built in these projects are supplemented with storage units. These can then be integrated into existing island grids via the "Juwi Hybrid IQ" software developed by Juwi.

In addition to the now announced project in Egypt, Juwi is currently building five other hybrid projects on a power plant scale. In Australia, these are the Esperance project for Horizon Power, Jacinth Ambrosia for Iluka Resources, Jabiru for the Northern Territory Government and Gruyere for APA. Juwi is also building a ten-megawatt solar farm in South Africa to supply its own electricity to a gold mine located around 120 kilometers southeast of Johannesburg on behalf of Pan African Ressources.



Source: IWR Online, 11 May 2021

 


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