Early engineering work has begun on a hybrid power plant project at a uranium mine in the Republic of Niger.

Construction has started on BHP’s “first off-grid large-scale renewable energy project”, totalling 38 MW of solar power and a 10.1MW/5.4 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), at two nickel mines in Western Australia which supply Tesla for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

Two new battery projects announced this week will see mining sites in Western Australia and the South American nation of Suriname greatly reduce their dependency on fossil fuel generation.

A battery energy storage system paired with a new solar project will be installed at an off-grid mine in the Australian state of Queensland to help the site reduce diesel use.

Wärtsilä has been awarded a contract to deploy a battery storage system at a gold mine in Australia, marking the company’s first ESS project in the country.

Solar and solar-plus-storage systems will be installed at two nickel mines in Western Australia for BHP, a supplier to Tesla, while a Rio Tinto ilmenite mine in Madagascar will be powered by a solar-wind-storage hybrid plant.