Fortescue (ASX:FMG) has received a $10 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to help it develop, build, and demonstrate first-of-a-kind fast chargers for heavy mine site vehicles.
The funding has been awarded under the Australian Government’s Industrial Transformation Stream, part of the Powering the Regions Fund. This $400 million program aims to support emissions reduction at existing industrial facilities in regional Australia.
Fortescue’s $35.3 million ‘Fast Charger for Heavy Battery Electric Vehicles’ project will develop 6 MW fast chargers, capable of charging 240-tonne battery electric trucks in under 30 minutes.
Preliminary testing is currently underway, with the project due to be completed in late 2025.
ARENA Chief Executive Darren Miller says the project will help reduce emissions in one of Australia’s most carbon intensive industries.
“ARENA is working to reduce emissions from Australia’s heavy industry, with heavy haulage high on the priority list for the mining sector,” says Miller.
“Heavy haulage for remote mine sites contributes around a quarter of the mining industry’s emission and is considered a hard to abate sector, so we’re investing in the technologies that will be part of the solution,.”
The ‘Fast Charger for Heavy Battery Electric Vehicles’ project is the next stage of fast charger development for Fortescue, building on an existing 3 MW prototype. Once developed, the fast charger will be installed, demonstrated, and tested at Fortescue’s Hazelmere and Christmas Creek mine sites.
Miller says if the fast charger can be validated at the operational Christmas Creek mine site, “we’d like to see the technology widely deployed across Australia’s resources industry”.
The fast charger will be developed with global charging system standardisation in mind, ensuring compatibility with any equipment that meets the connector standard across mining, rail, and other heavy industry applications.
Australian iron ore mining produces roughly 5 million tonnes of CO2 each year due to fleet diesel consumption. Pathways to decarbonising mine operations are currently limited by a lack of commercially available solutions on the market.
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Images: Fortescue
