5B’s Fold-Out Solar To Help Power WA Lithium Mine

Rapidly deployable home-grown solar energy tech is to feature in a hybrid power station for a major lithium mining project in Western Australia.

Liontown’s Kathleen Valley Lithium Project in WA’s North-eastern Goldfields will crank out spodumene concentrate. This is used in the production of lithium hydroxide utilised in cathodes for lithium-ion batteries for various applications including electric cars and home energy storage.

While commercial production is yet to commence at Kathleen Valley, buyers including Tesla  and Ford already have dibs on a big chunk of Kathleen Valley’s output.

The venture will be an energy-intensive exercise and renewables are to play a significant role in keep electricity costs and emissions down. In September last year, Liontown executed a Letter of Award with Zenith Energy for electricity supply. Zenith is constructing an off-grid hybrid power station on a build, own, operate basis to supply Kathleen Valley’s operations, which will consist of:

• wind turbines (30MW total capacity)
• a solar farm (16MW capacity)
• a battery energy storage system (17MW/19MWh)
• gas generation (27MW)
• diesel standby generation (5MW)
• Synchronous condensers

Australia’s 5B announced yesterday it had been appointed as the solar technology provider for the 16MW solar farm. 5B will supply its Maverick system, which is a modular, pre-fabricated and pre-configured solar panel and racking solution including concrete ballast shipped in blocks each containing up to 90 x 540-550W solar panels that are then unfolded on-site.

By mid-December last year, 5B had deployed its Maverick technology across more than 100 sites worldwide with a total generating capacity of more than 60MW. One of the major sites we’ve mentioned previously here on SQ – SA Water’s Happy Valley water treatment plant, which is comprised of around 30,000 panels.

Zenith Feels A Need For Speed

Commenting on 5B’s appointment, Zenith Energy’s Managing Director and CEO Hamish Moffat said:

“5B has demonstrated that it has the potential to get the Kathleen Valley site to full solar PV generation capacity three months ahead of conventional single access tracker solutions with the potential to save more than sixty percent of the man hours required on site.”

How fast can 5B’s Maverick system be deployed?

Just as an indication, the company said it was able to roll out, err.. fold out, 1.1MW capacity in a single day for a project in Chile – with a team of only 10. That would be somewhere around 2,000 solar panels.

Zenith Energy will begin deploying the 342 5B Maverick array systems in June this year. Liontown’s Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Zenith Energy is for an initial period of 15 years from completion of construction of the hybrid power station.

The first spodumene production from Kathleen Valley is currently expected in the second quarter of next year. Liontown is also investigating the potential for constructing an integrated refinery at Kathleen Valley to further process spodumene from the mine to higher value Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate. According to the company it could produce ~86ktpa of Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate, making it one of the largest refineries outside China.