South Deep makes history

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

SOUTH DEEP MAKES HISTORY

Gold Fields is on course to becoming the first mine in South Africa to build and operate its own solar plant through the South Deep Solar Project. By Dineo Phoshoko

The 40 MW solar plant will generate over 20% of the average electricity consumption of the mine and will include 116 000 solar panels, covering 118 hectares. The cost of the plant is estimated at R660 million, with construction expected to begin in Q2 2021.

Once commissioned during Q2 2022, the selfgenerated renewable energy plant will save the mine approximately R120 million in electricity costs. Minerals Council South Africa notes that self-generation projects have the potential to contribute significantly towards easing electricity supply constraints in South Africa, while improving the competitiveness of the mining sector by reducing the cost of electricity and the industry’s carbon footprint.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

The need to transition to greater renewable energy use is not simply a mining or South African issue – it is a global concern

Going off the grid

Although the mine will continue to remain on the grid for most of its electricity needs, the project will demonstrate that mines can become successful independent power producers (IPPs). There is still a lot of ground work to be done before South African mines can get off the grid.

Speaking to Inside Mining, Martin Preece, executive vice-president, Gold Fields South Africa, says that, in order to move off-grid completely, each operation must ensure that sufficient sources of power are available to continue normal operations without interruption. He explains that the biggest challenge in this regard is to do so cost-effectively.

Preece mentions that the energy mix at each mine will differ depending on the sources of renewable energy and the need to supplement these with diesel for gas-driven generators. As such, over the long term, the solution is for hydrogen and battery storage solutions to evolve to become more cost-effective, which will allow for the use of solar power during the day while storing energy for use at night.

“In our view, these options are not yet costeffective; this will change over time, however, as technology progresses and the use of renewable energy increases. At the moment, the most cost-effective storage solution is to feed excess electricity into the national grid for later consumption,” Preece says.

Regulatory challenges

The regulatory process has been identified as a major stumbling block for generating and implementing renewable energy at mines. During his State of the Nation Address earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned that renewable energy had the potential to ease the strain on South Africa’s power supply. He did also acknowledge that easing the licensing requirements for new embedded generation projects could unlock up to 5 000 MW of additional capacity.

Preece suggests that further regulatory reforms to streamline the process of regulatory approval and licensing of self-generation electricity projects are required to reduce red tape and enable shorter timelines. In addition, increasing the cap from 10 MW to 50 MW will bring significant capacity online and will help to ease electricity supply constraints in South Africa.

“For larger mining houses, the need to wheel power and capture economies of scale with larger, more cost-effective projects is critical. Cost-effective storage options need to be found. At the moment, a viable option is to feed electricity into the grid for night-time consumption.”

Licence application process

On 25 February 2021, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) granted Gold Fields a licence for the solar project. “Ours is an owner build and operate model; under that model, we applied for

our licence on the basis of self-generation for selfconsumption in June 2020,” explains Preece.

“We applied for the licence and submitted our technical and economic study, as well as the approved environmental authorisation. This was followed by a number of interactions with the regulator to provide further details or to address technical and other questions where required.”

Gold Fields also included Eskom in the application process and requested the power utility to provide input and consent. “This was followed by a public input process led by Nersa. The Nersa technical committee considered our application and made a recommendation to its board,” Preece says. The entire licence application process took just under a year to complete.

Having successfully obtained its licence, Gold Fields learnt some valuable lessons from the application process. According to Preece, the licensing process cannot be outsourced and needs to be led and owned by the business. “It is important to clearly understand the expectations and requirements, and to build sound working relationships with all parties to ensure these expectations and requirements are met.”

Future projects

Apart from South Deep, Gold Fields has two other mines in Africa – Tarkwa and Damang, both in Ghana. Preece states that there are future energy plans for these mines, including renewable sources, particularly solar. “However, this is not a short- to medium-term priority, as the two mines have dedicated gas plants that provide all their current electricity needs.”

He highlights that while the use of renewable energy will go a long way in easing the electricity supply constraints impacting all aspects of the economy, the need to transition to greater renewable energy use is not simply a mining or South African issue – it is a global concern.

“We are very excited about the project and extremely proud of the difference it is going to make to our mine and the group’s de-carbonisation efforts, as well as the contribution it will make to the sustainability of our business,” Preece concludes.

Martin Preece is the executive vicepresident of Gold Fields South Africa (Credit: Gold Fields)