Caterpillar is putting 240-ton electric haul truck to work in Vale mine | Hacker News Reader

Caterpillar is putting 240-ton electric haul truck to work in Vale mine

electrek.co

26 pointsthelastgallon17 comments

Look at the charging station.[1] Behind the charger is a trailer. That's a standard Caterpillar mobile generator trailer, 2800 KVA.[2] Inside the trailer is an ordinary, although large, Caterpillar Diesel engine driving a generator. Caterpillar rents those generator trailers for emergency power.

This is probably just the demo setup. But it's kind of embarrassing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt0k3TYFh3k&t=27s

[2] https://www.cat.com/en_US/products/new/power-systems/electri...

Mines are commonly not in the most accessible space, so it's not unreasonable for them to continue to use fossil fuel backups for at least some time.

For improving climate change it's important to not let perfect get in the way of better, especially when it's in an industry that has such a massive environmental impact.

Solar arrays are cheaper than generators and not exactly difficult to install.

yes, I'd much rather see that, but I'd rather them start migrating now less optimally than buying equipment with decades of expected use that can't be migrated to cleaner energy.

It's easy to install as long as you only need power during daylight hours, but if you need batteries it gets more complicated, we have decades of experience with backup generators and only a few years experience with grid scale batteries, and if there's multiple of these trucks that need to charge it's definitely a larger scale than whole home (maybe more neighborhood scale than grid scale).

I'm definitely in the we need to be moving way faster than we are, but if companies are gonna get shit on for doing better but not perfect & shit on if they do nothing then they're just gonna choose to do nothing cause it's easier and in cases like this no one would have been talking about them in the first place.

The mining truck pictured seems to be this one.[1] That's a Diesel-electric drive mining truck, and it is powered by the same diesel engine used in the generator trailer shown in the video. So, if you're charging from that stationary generator, all you've done is take the Diesel and generator out of the truck and put them in a box on the ground.

Now, really, this is just a problem with the demo. The customer here has plenty of renewable power available. Plus, of course, if the mining situation means mostly moving ore downhill, the truck may be recharged by its own regenerative braking system.

[1] https://machine.market/specification-24166

> But it's kind of embarrassing

Sorry for you. But it’s still far more efficient, cleaner, safer and quieter to run a generator and charge batteries.

And the ad video “building more sustainable world”.

—your mining company

i thought many of those haulers were electric; (just with on-board diesel generators) due to torque on the one hand and the ability to recharge the batteries when fully loaded on the way down enough to let them drive back up without additional recharging (at least with quarries in mountains).

You'd still need an insanely large battery to move 240 tons, wouldn't you? I can't find any info on the battery capacity of this specimen.

yeah I wonder how many of those 240 tons ARE the battery!

None? That 240 tons is the payload.

Probably less than you'd think. Moving things on wheels is a lot easier than (for example) lifting and, compared to cars, it does not need to accelerate fast or deal with highly varying loads.

There is a train in Australia that carries ore from a mine to a port, fully electric, which never needs external charging - the mine is higher than the port, so the train just charges its internal batteries going down, which is enough to drive it back up to the mine, it's very cool:

The "infinity train" is still under construction.

Due to launch sometime soon in 2024 (as announced in 2022) it's still yet to roll on it's maiden haul.

They are still hiring electrical techs though.

Well weight is 110x normal EV, but range is 30x less. So about 220kwh?

I would guess this as well. There are plenty of working examples for conveyors. "Since it is downhill conveying, the system generates more than 100 million kilowatt-hours per year at a load of 11.000 t/h. The disk breaks have a diameter of 2,5 m. The length of the 3-part system is 12.700 m. Almost the complete belt is operating in tunnels to protect it from the danger of avalanches in the Andes." https://conveyorbeltguide.com/examples-of-use.html

Many of them are. I'm not sure what is newsworthy about this one. Maybe it's the largest Caterpillar has done?

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