Mining is heavy business, and this giant Komatsu excavator is too.
It weighs 2 million pounds, but comes standard with fully-electric drive mode, allowing even the world’s largest mining operations to suddenly zero-out emissions from excavation vehicles.
The PC9000-12 is the largest excavator Komatsu has ever built. It can move 80 tons with a single movement of its giant scoop, and having undergone successful testing at Suncor Mining’s Alberta sand mine, it’s now ready for order and delivery around the world.
The behemoth’s party trick, reports Electrek, is that you can plug it in like you’d plug in and use a vacuum, only you need grid-scale power rather than a home electrical outlet.
Once it is plugged it, a face-frying 4 megawatts of power are drawn into 2 electrical motors that crank out the equivalent of 5,300 horse power.
“The PC9000-12 sets a new benchmark for global surface mining operations,” explains Peter Buhles, Komatsu Vice President, Sales and Service. “With its versatile configurations – including face shovel and backhoe, as well as diesel and electric drive options – we can efficiently serve all major mining operations worldwide.”
“The PC9000-12 delivers the power, performance and reliability our customers expect, while supporting higher productivity, lower emissions per-ton and seamless integration with autonomous haulage systems.”
Imagine if you will a giant hole in the ground. Now place this imaginary hole 150 kilometers from any city, and fill the bottom of it with large hauling trucks. Now consider if you will, that to get the truck from the bottom of the hole to the top, it must drive up a long series of ramps at 40 degree angles.
How much diesel does it use to get that truck from the bottom to the top 8 times every day?
The recent disruption in worldwide diesel production and refining from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has significantly impacted certain mining operations that can’t get around the need to power their fleet and generators with diesel.
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Electric excavators and haul trucks would help insulate the industry—certain parts of which are currently enjoying record-high margins, from future oil shocks, and the PC9000-12 could do exactly that.
Mining would be one of the hardest sectors to de-carbonize, but opportunities are there to reduce its carbon footprint in tandem with the leaps and bounds the industry has made reducing its environmental footprint in other ways such as tailings storage and disposal, and reclamation costs being budgeted upfront.
For example, Electrek also reported that an electric haul truck—remember the ones at the bottom of the hole—has already been produced and proven, and is ready for action in the next generation of mines.
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