An astonishingly expensive process for turning electricity into less electricity
Mine site vehicles present an unusually good case for solar energy for electric vehicles. A vehicle operating on a mine site operates for fixed, predictable hours which removes the uncertainty around energy storage to compensate for intermittent supply.
Mine site vehicles are also built on a gargantuan scale, which means that battery size is not the same challenge that it is for personal cars.
The biggest advantage, however, is that mine site vehicles operate within a fixed area, never far from their charging station. All the major obstacles to personal electric vehicles are absent and so a mine site is perhaps the best possible place to install a set of solar panels to power electric vehicles.
Anglo-American has gone a rather different route by unveiling a mammoth 210-ton zero-emissions truck set…