Pacific Energy and Westgold Resources Limited have celebrated the operationality of Tuckabianna Hybrid Power Facility—the first of four new hybrid power stations being developed for Westgold.
The Tuckabianna facility includes a 6MW solar farm fitted with 11,088 PV panels, a battery energy storage system with 2.4MW installed capacity, and a 9.5MW gas-fuelled power station.
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The four facilities—Tuckabianna, Bluebird, Fortnum and Big Bell—are expected to provide substantial reductions in emissions and power costs across Westgold’s operations in the Murchison and Bryah regions of Western Australia.
The four new facilities are at the heart of the Westgold’s Clean Energy Transition initiative, with the gas-fired power stations, battery storage and solar farms owned and operated by Pacific Energy under an Electricity Purchase Agreement, and the LNG provided by Clean Energy Fuels Australia (CEFA) under an LNG supply agreement.
The system will have a combined installed capacity of 82MW, providing an expected annual reduction of 38 million litres in diesel fuel usage and approximately 57,000 tonnes less per year in CO2 equivalent emissions.
Westgold chair the Hon. Cheryl Edwardes AM and managing director Wayne Bramwell joined business partners, local officials and Traditional Owners onsite to open the 17.9MW Tuckabianna Hybrid Power Facility located 20km east of Cue.
Bramwell said, “Westgold continues to innovate to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and drive our operating costs down. This new hybrid power facility at Tuckabianna incorporates renewable energy and is a great first step along this journey, with power generated from these facilities energising our mines and processing hubs for decades to come. The successful commissioning of Tuckabianna is a testament to the tireless work of Westgold’s project and operational teams, business partners at Pacific Energy and CEFA and construction crews who have delivered our first power station safely and on schedule.”
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Pacific Energy CEO Jamie Cullen said, “Congratulations to the Pacific Energy and Westgold project teams for delivering the Tuckabianna hybrid station—on time, and most importantly safely and incident-free.
“Tuckabianna is part of a larger project to consolidate six existing power stations into four high efficiency hybrid power stations that incorporate gas, solar and battery storage systems. Collectively this represents one of the largest fully integrated hybrid power systems in the Australian mining sector.”
