Western Australia-headquartered clean energy developer Pacific Energy has signed a deal to deliver its biggest solar farm yet for South African miner Gold Fields’ St Ives mine, 80 kilometres south of Kalgoorlie.
Pacific Energy will build a 60,000 solar panel, 35 MW solar farm for the St Ives gold mine, which is part of Gold Fields’ $296 million (USD 198 million) St Ives Renewables Project.
Panels will be supplied by Longi and the system will use a Nextracker tracking system, Fimer inverters and Pacific Energy in-house designed and manufactured PCU skids.
The project will also includes 42 MW of wind power, new substations and power transmission line and is expected to power the site using upwards of 70% renewable energy to reduce the mine’s carbon emissions by about 50% by 2030.
The solar farm is the largest array Pacific Energy has ever been commissioned to deliver and will meet nearly half of the power system’s renewable energy target.
Pacific Energy Chief Executive Jamie Cullen said Pacific Energy has designed the system with Gold Fields’ decarbonisation targets in mind.
“Our engineers have factored in scalability to the solar design so that Gold Fields could expand its solar contribution almost immediately if it needed to,” Cullen said.
“A key lesson we’ve learned over the years is that the design needs to be flexible and account for the rapid changes we’re seeing in the renewable energy transition.”
Gold Fields Principal Specialist – Project Director Simon Schmid said partnering with a local company also delivered on the Gold Fields’ local procurement commitments.
Pacific Energy will commence civil work on the solar farm in November 2024 and expects it to be fully operational in 2026.
Updated 18 October 2024.
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630 kilometres west of Perth?
I didn’t realise St Ives was a deep sea mine.
It’s a floating solar install … just kidding. Thanks for the heads up Brian, correction has been made at we’ve move the mine to the east of Perth.