How big can a battery be in a vehicle? We have seen what, so far, is the largest, a prototype of 1.4 MWh battery received by the Australian mining company Fortescue, which will mount a 240 ton electric mining truck Developed in partnership with Liebherr. The goal is to start testing it this year
This gigantic monster battery was developed by a 50-strong engineering team at Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) in the UK, acquired by Fortescue in March last year. Now it has already arrived at the company’s workshops in Perth (Australia).
It is made up of eight individually cooled sub-packages, each containing 36 battery modules. When assembled, this gigantic stack measures a whopping 3.6 x 1.6 x 2.4 meters. It will be able to store those 1.4 MWh of energy and it supports fast charging that allows it to be recharged in just 30 minutes. A regenerative braking system will recover energy when the truck is traveling downhill.
In June 2022, Fortescue signed an agreement with the German/Swiss multinational Liebherr to integrate zero emission technologies into the mining truck. T264, which is currently powered by a 2700 hp diesel engine. It is this vehicle that will receive this prototype power system from 15 tons, before being transported to a facility in the Pilbara, Western Australia, for on-site testing.
Fortescue is one of the world’s largest iron ore producers and aims to have “real zero emissions” from its land operations by 2030. To do this, it intends to replace its fleet of diesel trucks with battery electric vehicles or green hydrogen. Hence his billionaire (6.2 billion dollars) decarbonization plan.
It seems impossible that batteries, with an energy density one hundred times less than fossil fuels, can move these masses. But be careful, the mining trucks make very short journeys, with a steep slope and loaded. Electric motors offer the necessary torque to climb at low speeds. In fact, the biggest trucks are often electric, with diesel generators providing that electricity. And yes, the battery weighs a lot, 15 tons, but less than those diesel generators.
We are talking about runs of a few hundred meters (the deepest open pit mines are about 250 meters deep), autonomy is not key. And the fact that they can regenerate energy on the descents is key. If the electricity they are charged with is cheap, produced from renewable sources, it may make sense.
“This system is the first of many technologies that will help Fortescue achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2030,” WAE CEO Craig Wilson said. “Powered solely by renewable energy, it will prevent huge amounts of fossil fuels from being used in the mining industry, without compromising the vehicle’s cargo capacity.”
Source: WAE
