According to China Railway Resources Group, the off-grid solar-storage heavy-load direct-start power supply system of China Railway Resources Lvsha Mining Co., Ltd. recently passed full-line power transmission in one go. As the first solar-storage off-grid heavy-load direct-start power supply system exclusively supporting mining operations in Africa, the stable operation of this system has successfully resolved long-standing technical challenges in African mining areas, such as power shortages and instantaneous load impacts from large-scale mining and processing equipment, marking a significant breakthrough in the green and low-carbon transformation of Chinese overseas mining enterprises.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has weak public power infrastructure, with insufficient main grid coverage and power supply reliability. Frequent power outages and load shedding severely constrain mining enterprises from achieving production targets and stable operations. Lvsha Mining Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Lvsha Mining") previously relied heavily on external grid power for production. Sudden power outages could easily cause shutdowns of large-scale beneficiation equipment, forcing the enterprise to rely on diesel generators for emergency production, which not only significantly increased fuel and maintenance costs but also brought pressures such as higher carbon emissions and increased equipment wear.
To address the power supply challenge, Lvsha Mining has anchored its development direction in green intelligence and low-carbon transformation, studying and formulating a long-term clean energy supply solution tailored to the complex production conditions of African mines.
"We have built a heavy-load direct-start power supply system that is completely independent of the public grid and can directly start large mining machinery equipment using solar-storage power without relying on other power sources," said Li Xingwu, Chairman of Lvsha Mining. The power station has a solar photovoltaic installed capacity of 32 megawatts, paired with 58 megawatts of energy storage, and innovatively adopts an integrated "construction-operation-electricity sales" operation model. Equipped with Huawei's power quality regulation core equipment, the station has successfully overcome the global mining industry's common technical challenge of instantaneous power surges during the startup of large crushing equipment such as semi-autogenous mills, ensuring that the entire beneficiation production line is independently driven by pure clean energy. This achieves a key leap in off-grid solar-storage power supply technology for overseas non-ferrous metal mines. After commissioning, the station can stably output 14 megawatts of clean power during the day, significantly improving the mine's energy self-sufficiency rate and continuously reducing the enterprise's comprehensive production and operation costs.