Alinta powers up 60-MW Australian solar farm for Fortescue

• Alinta Energy's 60-MW Chichester Hub remote solar farm in Western Australia has actually begun providing power to iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (ASX: FMG), the two business introduced on Wednesday.

The solar farm, in the Pilbara region, is already covering the entire daytime power consumption at Fortescue's Christmas Creek and also Cloudbreak mines. Fortescue's continuing to be electrical power needs will certainly be met by a 35MW/11MWh battery storage facility and also gas-fired power generation at Alinta Energy's existing Newman Power Station.

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Utilizing over 160,000 panels on an area of 120 hectares, this is Western Australia's biggest remote solar farm, Alinta said. The park will displace around 100 million litres of diesel per year.

As part of the project, the Australian power producer also constructed some 60 kilometres of brand-new transmission lines to link Fortescue's Christmas Creek and Cloudbreak mines to the solar farm and to Alinta's existing network infrastructure.

"We took an ambitious short from Fortescue, who wanted to considerably lower their discharges, and made it a truth in just three years," Alinta head Jeff Dimery said.

The solar project, which got to financial investment choice in very early 2019, received government financing to the tune of AUD 114 million (USD 81.3 m/EUR 71.8 m) from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) under its Advancing Renewables programme.

"As Fortescue transitions from a pure play iron ore producer to an eco-friendly energy and sources firm, this milestone is a critical part of our Pilbara Energy Connect project which together with the Chichester solar farm will see 25% of Fortescue's stationary energy powered by solar," Fortescue chief executive Elizabeth Gaines claimed in a different statement.