The new system will transport overburden from Loy Yang mine to a new internal dump in a worked out section of the mine. Historically, overburden spoil was transported to an external dump up to 10km away from where the material was being excavated.

The dedicated open cut mine provides the coal supply for the Loy Yang A and B power stations.

The project will help AGL Energy comply with its environmental goals through mine rehabilitation and energy saving measures.

BMT is responsible for the overall design, providing the detailed design for civil, structural and mechanical elements, as well as liaising with AGL Energy’s in-house team which is delivering the electrical design.

The new conveyor system will have the capacity to transport up to 8,500 tonne/hr of material on 2m wide belts running at 5.3m/s.

The new downhill conveyor will be approximately 1.34km long, dropping 131m to the mine floor using three 1000kW variable-frequency drives, to generate power and introduce it back into the grid.

The new conveyers have been designed as a modular system with inherent flexibility to allow for unstable ground conditions and will deliver a power saving of around five Megawatts (MW) over the existing system through one MW of regeneration and four MW of reduction in demand.

The project has to be delivered within tight time constraints to ensure the new infrastructure is ready to accept plant currently deployed on the external dump.

The very large travelling stacker has to be moved to the floor of the mine crossing the 500 MW “Basslink” cable that connects the electricity grids of Victoria and Tasmania, during an outage planned for March 2017.

A spokesperson from AGL Energy said: “AGL Energy is pleased that BMT is supporting the delivery of environmental improvements to its Loy Yang Mine. BMT’s innovative design will ensure that overburden will be moved efficiently and effectively to the new internal dump, backfilling and rehabilitating the mine as part of its day to day activities.”