Most open pit mining uses self charging electric trucks. They harvest energy from the full load while descending, then use that energy to get back up the mountain. But it’s not efficient at lower temperature because lithium chemistry is crap at low temps. Sodium chemistry works to -40C without needing to heat the battery. The batteries are not very energy dense, so ok for a big truck.
Do they do this because mining cares about the environment? Fuck no, it’s cheaper.
Isn’t the pit downward, and they have to bring the load up?
Typically they blow off the top of a mountain and carry the load down.
That is until they have taken the mountain down to surrounding elevation and keep going…
Only when the orebody happens to be on the top of a mountain. Plenty of deep pits to haul up out of as well, but an overhead lines+pantograph setup allows you to use grid power for the hard bit and battery power for the easy bits on the level.
Most mining operations use diesel trucks.
Caterpillar has been making electric trucks for years. Sandvik, Leibherr, Hitachi and Scania as well. Because mines use them.
It uses an electric motor but it’s powered by a diesel engine. It does have electric retarding braking but I don’t see anything saying that energy is harvested and stored in a battery.
https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/equipment/off-highway-trucks/mining-trucks/15970073.html
So the put a regenerative motor in a truck just to not use the energy. Ok boss.
Look at the specs on the site I linked boss
That 798 still burns diesel.
Because trucks need to move from location to location empty.
The truck in the OP also needs to do empty hauls, yet it does not burn diesel.
capable of recharging from 0% to 100% in 20 to 25 minutes
That’s the most insane part of this. Wouldn’t you want this to have the battery capacity for 4-12 hours and let it recharge over night?
Arent mining operations a 24/7 thing? Having it charged by the end of lunch break means no downtime.
Depends if this is enough to last til lunch and it can fully charge during lunch its fine.
There’s two modes of thought when it comes to charging
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like you mentioned: a slow AC charge overnight. Benefit here is you can slow down the charge at times of the night when electricity happens to be expensive.
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a fast DC charge that takes no longer than a lunch break. We typically size these batteries such that they can run till lunch, take a fast DC charge over the lunch break, and then are ready by the time lunch is over to complete the rest of the shift.
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Mining is a 24/7 operation. There is no “over night” rest period. You need batteries that can charge during breaks for workers and usually they have 3 breaks in a 12 hour shift.
So 4 hours runtime, 20 minutes back to full charge is a pretty good fit.
Never mind the couple of megawatts needed to charge a 600kW battery in 1/3rd of an hour. 2 MW is enough to comfortably power ~100 homes. Have a fleet of these on charge and you’re drawing the same amount of power as a small town.
Well, at least someone is bothering.
Pffft ONLY 2,000x larger than my biggest battery.
^(this is a joke, that is impressive)^
it has a USB-C for charging.
Oh my that is a MASSIVE battery. More of these please ASAP.
