Watt's it to you? Track power consumption, distribution, and loss to identify areas power usage can be reduced.

Track power consumption, distribution, and loss to identify areas where power usage can be reduced. 

Challenge Description

Barrick Nevada is a substantial consumer of electrical energy when it comes to the mining and processing of gold.  Electrical consumption is demanded by almost all aspects of the mining process, including but not limited to:  Administrative and maintenance buildings, open pit cable shovels, processing facilities, ventilation, ect…  Average industrial electricity rates in Nevada average 6.48 cents/kWh (https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/nevada/).

Energy management is a multi beneficial initiative, providing a reduction in operating costs and promoting Barrick’s environmentally sustainable agenda.  Energy management and tracking can be implemented in several different ways.  For example energy loss can be tracked from point of delivery to the consumption source where power mismanagement can be track by correlating usage by functional area to production.

User Story

Barrick knows an actual electrical cost to the business through billing, but understanding distribution and loss is more ambiguous.  It is a key initiative at Barrick to identify electrical pitfalls and propose effective solutions to drive a more productive management plan

Potential Areas to Consider

Defect elimination studies to identify trends between power consumption and production could minimize energy mismanagement and result in substantial savings to the business.  Pairing time usage models of assets with electrical delivery can also lead to a reduction in unnecessary consumed power. 

Finally, more robust instrumentation, such as VFDs or strategic idling of fixed assets could be analyzed to determine usage gaps for electrical power.

Impact and Value

Actuals savings of misused energy

Potential savings for identifying and remediating equipment issues based on time usage models

Correlation of production activities to power consumption by major equipment ie: fans and cable shovels

Potential savings for using automation and machine learning to optimize equipment

Mentors

Lead Mentor - Lydia Schoen, Process Reliability Engineer, Goldstrike, NV

Jared Schoen, Engineer

Chih-Ting Lo, Energy and Innovations Consultant