Fortescue awarded A$10 million to support development of 6MW truck chargers
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has awarded A$10 million to Fortescue (ASX: FMG) to help build and test a first-of-a-kind fast charger for heavy mine site vehicles.
The 6-megawatt charger, first announced in September, is currently under development by Fortescue Zero, the iron ore miner’s technology arm.
According to the company, these chargers are capable of charging 240-tonne battery electric trucks in just under 30 minutes, making them the most powerful to date. The battery trucks are part of the historic A$4 billion deal it signed with Liebherr earlier this year.
“As part of our decarbonization plan, we intend to roll out around 250 fast chargers of varying capacities across our iron ore operations before the end of this decade,” Fortescue Metals CEO Dino Otranto said in a news release.
“Not only will this project serve as a catalyst for demand from external heavy industry customers, but it will also enable a significant reduction in emissions,” he said.
ARENA CEO Darren Miller also said the fast charger project, with an estimated cost of A$35.3 million, would help reduce emissions in one of Australia’s most carbon-intensive industries.
Australia’s iron ore mining produces roughly 5 million tonnes of CO2 each year due to fleet diesel consumption. However, pathways to decarbonizing mine operations are currently limited by a lack of commercially available solutions on the market, according to ARENA.
“We’re investing in the technologies that will be part of the solution”
ARENA CEO Darren Miller
“ARENA is working to reduce emissions from Australia’s heavy industry, with heavy haulage high on the priority list for the mining sector,” Miller said.
“Heavy haulage for remote mine sites contributes around a quarter of the mining industry’s emission and is considered a hard-to-abate sector, so we’re investing in the technologies that will be part of the solution.”
The funding was awarded under the Australian government’s Industrial Transformation Stream, part of the Powering the Regions Fund. This A$400 million program aims to support emissions reduction at existing industrial facilities in regional Australia.
The project is the next stage of fast charger development for Fortescue, building on an existing 3-megawatt prototype. Once developed, the fast charger will be installed, demonstrated and tested at Fortescue’s Hazelmere and Christmas Creek mine sites.
“If the fast charger can be successfully validated at the operational Christmas Creek mine site, we’d like to see the technology widely deployed across Australia’s resources industry,” Miller said. “These are the kinds of challenges ARENA is looking to address through the Industrial Transformation Stream.”
“These innovative chargers are designed to be a safe, rugged, high power and scalable fast charging solution for multiple different vehicle applications,” Fortescue Zero chief executive officer Ellie Coates added.
The fast charger will be developed with global charging system standardization in mind, ensuring compatibility with any equipment that meets the connector standard across mining, rail and other heavy industry applications.
Preliminary testing is currently underway, with the project due to be completed in late 2025.