Brent crude jumping from $92 to over $113 per barrel in a single week is used by Edith Kikonyogo, Managing Director of Aggreko Africa, to argue that African mines should cut exposure to fuel price volatility by shifting from pure thermal generation to hybrid power. She points to integrating diesel or HFO with solar PV, battery energy storage systems and, where available, grid connections to stabilise costs and improve supply resilience. For mine planners and power engineers, the message is to design modular, multi-source plants rather than locking into single-fuel genset fleets.

ABB has integrated its ABB Ability Industrial Knowledge Vault generative AI with the ABB Ability Energy Management System, allowing plant teams in sectors including mining to query energy and sustainability data via natural language rather than fixed dashboards. The system sits on top of existing EMS analytics and reporting, pulling from historical and real-time data to generate on-demand insights, summaries and explanations. For mines running complex power mixes and demand-response contracts, this could shorten decision cycles for load shifting, peak shaving and emissions reporting without reconfiguring SCADA or historian setups.

Metso has signed a major agreement to supply its VSF solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX-EW) technology to Southern Peru Copper Corporation’s Tia Maria greenfield project in Cocachacra, Arequipa. The SX-EW plant is designed to produce 120,000 t/y of high-purity copper cathode, using Metso’s modular VSF cells and integrated electrowinning circuits. For process and project engineers, the deal signals a commitment to heap leach–SX-EW flowsheets at Tia Maria rather than conventional concentrator–smelter routes.