The technology group Wärtsilä announced March 29 that it will supply a 28 MW combined heat and power plant to the Meliadine Gold Mine project in Nunavut, owned by Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. The order includes five Wärtsilä 34DF dual-fuel engines running on light fuel oil (LFO) or natural gas.
Wärtsilä’s scope includes the power generation and CHP equipment supply, plant commissioning and training. The plant is expected to be operational during the first quarter of 2019. The power plant will provide baseload power for this new mine and mining facilities located in the Nunavut Territory. In addition to supplying electricity for the equipment and operations, the plant will also capture heat from the engines and engine exhaust and deliver that heat to the underground mine and buildings. This will achieve an extremely high level of overall efficiency.
As the Meliadine mine is off-grid, the mine needs to secure its own heat and power supply at all times. Furthermore, in addition to offering a reliable and highly efficient power plant, Wärtsilä’s dual-fuel technology has been selected with the future needs of Meliadine in mind. Initially the power plant will run on light-fuel oil, but natural gas may be available in the future. When this occurs the power plant can seamlessly switch over to natural gas.
Earlier, on March 22, Wärtsilä also announced that it will supply a 15 MWp solar PV power plant to Essakane Solar SAS in Burkina Faso. The order is the first for the company, traditionally a maker of gas and fuel oil power plants.
Wärtsilä President and CEO Jaakko Eskola said the company will “move fast into solar” and battery storage, the Financial Times reported. He said the company will announce similar deals soon, as there are opportunities in the countries Wartsila serves, both in developing countries building up grids and richer countries with a need for more flexible back-up generating capacity to supplement wind and solar.
“The winners in future will be operators who can provide hybrid energy solutions,” Eskola told the Financial Times. “We will increasingly become a service provider helping customers decide, ‘when should I run solar? When should I run battery? When should I run the engine?”
The PV plant will be built next to a 55 MW Wärtsilä power plant currently running on heavy fuel oil. The solar PV plant and the engine power plant will be controlled and operated in synchronization, thus forming the largest engine-solar PV hybrid power plant in Africa.
Wärtsilä’s scope covers the engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) for the solar PV power plant, including the control system for the hybrid plant, to be operational in late 2017. The order is booked for the first quarter of 2017.