Technology At The Heart Of Real Progress

The answer lies in automation, electrification, and digital technologies that drive production efficiencies, while simultaneously reducing energy consumption and emissions.

In one way or another, the whole world is a mining customer. The industry not only provides the metals and minerals that help build and power 21st century society – everything from smartphones to houses and hospitals – but also vital commodities for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, wind turbines, and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, without which the clean energy transition cannot take place.

Manufacturing a single EV, for example, requires five times more copper than a combustion-engine model (plus the infrastructure to power them needs much more copper and other critical minerals), while an onshore wind plant consumes nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired facility.

Moreover, as intermittent sources of energy such as solar PV and wind continue to grow their share in the overall energy mix, so the need to supply mines with continuous clean electricity using innovations like power microgrids and battery energy storage systems (BESS) becomes ever more important.

A holistic framework

As a provider of digital solutions to the mining sector, ABB is committed to providing solutions to these challenges, empowering its customers as they convert from fossil fuel mines to all-electric.

The ABB eMine™ portfolio – part of the company’s Real Progress initiative aimed at embedding sustainable practices in every process – comprises fully integrated automation and electrification systems, from mine to port, in addition to its established range of motor, drive, generator, and power control technologies. By engaging with stakeholders early in the mine project life cycle, ABB is able to deploy these technologies to optimise all mine processes and equipment, reducing power use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in real time.

eMine includes FastCharge, a fully automated charging system for trucks. Ramping up the speed and efficiency of the power supply keeps fleet downtime during charging to a minimum. FastCharge is vendor-agnostic, ensuring that current and future electrification technologies are compatible with existing OEM equipment.

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