Fuel consumption control of diesel power generation in remote mining areas

If off-grid or remote mining areas rely on diesel power generation for a long time, fuel transportation, refueling organization, low-load operation, maintenance and spare parts will continue to affect power costs. Cheap units do not necessarily bring cheap electricity.

Many sites only focus on the purchase price and rated power in the early stage. After the unit has been running continuously, they find that fuel consumption, refueling frequency, transportation roads, daily fuel tanks and maintenance plans are the long-term pressures.

The problems that mine owners and operations managers often encounter are: low-load operation of units with high fuel consumption, the entry of diesel vehicles to the site is affected by roads and weather, there is no clear daily or weekly fuel consumption estimate on site, and the refueling plan is always chasing the inventory.

When maintenance is also unplanned, minor failures and refueling can compound into outages. There appears to be a power generation system on site, but actual operation relies on temporary coordination, making costs and downtime risks difficult to control.

If the unit operates at low efficiency for a long time, diesel consumption will continue to increase. Every refueling operation in remote areas involves transportation, roads, weather, inventory and safety management. If any link is blocked, production and camp power consumption will be affected.

The lack of fuel consumption estimates can also affect purchasing judgments. Fuel tank capacity, unit rotation method, load-level operation and combination of diesel, photovoltaic and energy storage all need to be calculated based on on-site operating conditions.

First use the load curve to calculate the daily and weekly fuel consumption, and then work backwards to calculate the daily fuel tank, large-capacity fuel tank, oil replenishment channel and on-site safety inventory. The unit capacity, number of operating units and load grouping should be adjusted around the actual load rate to avoid long-term light loading of the main machine.

Long-term off-grid sites also need to put unit rotation, remote monitoring, maintenance cycles and hybrid energy assessment into the same operating table. There must be executable arrangements for when diesel vehicles will enter the site, when which unit will be maintained, and whether to switch to a smaller unit when the load is low.

The first step is to collect the main load, operating hours, shifts, seasonal changes, existing unit fuel consumption and diesel transportation cycle, and establish a fuel consumption baseline that can be discussed with operations, procurement, and on-site duty.

The second step is to plan the daily fuel tank and large fuel tank capacity based on this baseline, and then confirm the fuel truck entry and exit routes, fuel unloading safety requirements, rainy season road impacts and nighttime fuel replenishment restrictions to avoid fuel supply becoming a new shutdown point.

The third step is to arrange unit rotation or hierarchical operation according to load changes, and use operating hours, load rate, fuel consumption and alarm records to determine whether it is necessary to adjust the number of units, add smaller units, or enter diesel + photovoltaic + energy storage evaluation.

After the operation plan is implemented, the mining area can estimate diesel consumption by shift and know what the minimum safety stock is, which unit is mainly operating, which unit is rotated, and which unit is only connected during peak load or failure.

Fuel is no longer just a temporary coordination matter between warehouses and drivers, but is managed together with load rate, maintenance hours, spare parts preparation, and rainy season roads. Power generation costs are also easier to track to specific causes.