Komatsu's two-million-pound excavator now comes with a fully electric drive mode, allowing even the largest mining operations to cut emissions from excavation.
The numbers are almost impossible to picture. Two million pounds. Eighty tons moved in a single scoop. Four megawatts of power drawn from the grid. The Komatsu PC9000-12 is the largest excavator the company has ever built, and it runs on electricity.
The machine has been tested at Suncor Mining's sand mine in Alberta, Canada, where it performed successfully in real mining conditions. It is now ready for order and delivery to operations around the world.
Its electric drive mode works by plugging the machine into a power supply, much like plugging in any electrical device, though the scale is closer to powering a small town than a household appliance. Two electric motors produce the equivalent of 5,300 horsepower.
Mining has long been seen as one of the most difficult sectors to clean up, given the enormous power demands of heavy equipment operating in remote locations. An excavator of this size running on electricity changes what seems possible.
The machine does not replace efforts to reduce mining's broader footprint, but it demonstrates that the industry's heaviest tools can be reinvented. Where the excavator leads, other large equipment is likely to follow.
Sometimes progress arrives quietly, in the form of a machine doing its job in a Canadian mine. This excavator is one of those moments: a practical, working proof that the heaviest work in the world can be done more cleanly.
Source: Good News Network