WA gold miner expects 26-megawatt solar farm to be running later this year
5B, a Sydney-headquartered designer of prefabricated, relocatable solar PV systems, is deploying a 26 megawatt solar farm using its Maverick blocks at Bellevue Gold’s gold mine in Western Australia, which will form part of an 89.7 megawatt hybrid power station.
The off-grid facility includes 528 5B Maverick arrays, and the combined wind, solar, thermal generation and battery storage station is expected to supply about four-fifths of Bellevue’s power, with “engine-off” periods of 100 per cent renewable power.
The power station is financed, owned, and operated by independent power producer Zenith Energy.
“Increasingly our customers are pairing the 5B Maverick technology with batteries and wind turbines to deliver competitively priced dispatchable energy,” said 5B’s CEO David Griffin in a statement on Tuesday..
“Being redeployable, the 5B Maverick technology can also be easily relocated to meet the changing demands of our customers.”
Bellevue Gold recently commenced production and the solar farm is currently being installed. The company has an aspirational goal to be net zero (based on Scope 1 and Scope 2) emissions by 2026, said Bellevue’s CEO Darren Stralow.
“5B Mavericks are especially useful, given we have been able to design the solar farm with more megawatts of solar capacity for less ground disturbance than other solar panel options,” he added.
“This is important for land use – by minimising our impact, whilst still reducing emissions.”
The first 20 megawatts of solar is scheduled to be complete in the second quarter of the 2024 calendar year, and the second stage, 6 megawatts to come online in the third quarter.
Picture: credit 5B
Further reading
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