The standard objection to electric mining trucks used to be simple: mines are remote, and remote means diesel. That objection has inverted. Remote mines have the two things a solar microgrid needs most — land and irradiance — and the fuel they currently depend on is the most expensive energy on earth once trucked to a mine gate: delivered diesel at remote sites historically runs USD 1.30–1.80 per litre equivalent, and every litre of it arrives on a supply chain that can be interrupted by one washed-out road. A solar microgrid depot turns that dependency into infrastructure the mine owns. This article designs the system properly for the Dongfeng TZ5Y 80-tonne electric mining truck: the load, the array, the buffer, the control layer, the economics, and the phasing that de-risks the investment.
Start with the demand, because everything else follows from it. The TZ5Y in pit-to-crusher duty covers 200–260 km per truck-day loaded, consuming roughly 1.3–1.8 kWh per km in heavy haul duty — call it 300–450 kWh per truck per day, plus thermal management and auxiliaries.
| Fleet size | Daily energy demand | Annual energy demand | Typical peak charge draw |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 trucks | 1.5–2.3 MWh | 0.5–0.75 GWh | 0.4–0.6 MW |
| 10 trucks | 3.0–4.5 MWh | 1.0–1.5 GWh | 0.8–1.2 MW |
| 20 trucks | 6.0–9.0 MWh | 2.0–3.0 GWh | 1.6–2.4 MW |
That annual number is the design anchor: a 10-truck TZ5Y fleet consumes energy on the scale of a small industrial plant, and the microgrid is engineered exactly the way a mine engineers any other utility — with firm capacity, redundancy and a dispatch strategy.
Solar yield at remote mining latitudes is generally excellent — 1,800–2,300 kWh per kWp per year across the mining belts of Australia, Africa, the Andes and Central Asia, with high-altitude sites often exceeding coastal figures. Working the arithmetic for a 10-truck fleet at a site yielding 2,000 kWh/kWp/year:
The buffer bank does three jobs: it smooths charging peaks so the array and grid connection serve the fleet without oversizing either; it carries night-time charging energy; and it provides ride-through when the grid or site generation stumbles. Sizing logic:
A practical buffer for a 10-truck fleet lands at 2–4 MWh, with power conversion sized to the charge plaza's peak draw.
Mine electrical departments already run complex power systems; the microgrid's controller joins that world rather than replacing it. The dispatch logic is straightforward:
The fleet's charge scheduling — which truck charges when, at what rate — belongs to the same control layer, and this is where EV truck telemetry earns its keep: the dispatch system sees every pack's state of charge and the haul plan, and sequences charging against energy availability. A haul fleet that finishes its shift with staggered SoCs charges in staggered order; the microgrid never sees a wall of simultaneous demand it didn't schedule.
Modelling a 10-truck TZ5Y fleet on a 250 km/day duty, delivered diesel at USD 1.45/L, microgrid energy at a blended USD 0.05–0.09/kWh (solar-heavy with off-peak firm top-up):
| Annual energy cost, 10 trucks | Diesel fleet | TZ5Y on microgrid |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel / energy | USD 470,000–620,000 | USD 90,000–170,000 |
| Diesel logistics (convoy, storage, losses) | USD 60,000–120,000 | Eliminated |
| Annual energy-side saving | — | USD 420,000–650,000 |
| Microgrid CAPEX (400–600 kWp + 2–4 MWh buffer + plaza) | — | USD 900,000–1.8 million |
| Energy-side payback | — | ~2–4 years |
Add the maintenance-side savings of electrification (USD 6,500–10,000 per truck-year on a fleet this size) and the total programme payback typically lands inside three years — before pricing the supply-security value of not depending on a fuel convoy, which mine managers at remote sites price very highly indeed after their first interruption.
The phasing matters less for the money than for the organisation: mines electrify successfully when the electrical department owns the microgrid from the pilot onward, because it is power engineering, and mine electrical departments are very good at power engineering.
A composite drawn from deployments we support: a copper operation three hours of washboard road from the regional fuel depot spent a material share of its haul budget on delivered diesel, and every wet season brought at least one fuel-supply scare. Its TZ5Y programme started as a cost play — three trucks on existing grid power — but the energy pivot came in Phase 2: a 500 kWp array on the workshop apron and a 2 MWh second-life buffer bank. Within a year the haul fleet's energy cost had halved again, the fuel convoy's weekly trips had dropped to a trickle serving remaining diesel plant, and the mine's risk register quietly deleted its worst supply line. The mine manager's summary, relayed to us after commissioning, is the cleanest statement of the value we know: "The sun was already hitting the ground here. Now it moves the ore."
The microgrid's second dividend is regulatory. Remote mines live under environmental permits — dust deposition limits, water-use licensing for haul-road suppression, noise boundaries near communities — and an electric haul fleet with a solar depot improves the operator's position on all three. Dust falls because regenerative braking and sealed electric drivetrains remove the brake and exhaust particulate streams that diesel haul fleets generate; haul-road water use falls because the traffic composing the dust source shrinks as the electric share grows; and noise drops to the point where night-haul restrictions near communities (a binding constraint on more mines than managers admit) become negotiable. Several mining jurisdictions now formalise these advantages — zero-emission equipment credits in permit reviews, community-agreement clauses that favour quiet operations, and emerging ESG-linked financing terms where measured fleet emissions feed the interest rate. The engineering summary: the solar microgrid powers the trucks, and the electric trucks power the permit position.
A final engineering note on the charge plaza itself: mine-depot charging hardware lives a harder life than its city cousins — dust, washdown, blast vibration and temperature swings — so the specification should follow mining practice rather than automotive practice: IP-rated and dust-sealed dispensers, covered charge bays sited away from haul-road dust plumes, cable management rated for equipment traffic, and service access designed for gloved maintenance at shift change. The premium for mining-grade installation is modest and repays itself in availability; the failure mode it prevents — a charger down in the dry season with a three-week parts lead time — is the kind of event that turns an energy programme's critics into prophets.
Shaanxi Fenghan Trading is an authorised Dongfeng EV truck exporter. We supply the TZ5Y with complete battery documentation, and we support solar-microgrid depot programmes with load modelling against your haul data, charger and buffer coordination, commissioning and HV spares support — working alongside your mine's electrical engineering team, who own the system, as they should.
Ready to electrify your fleet? Contact Shaanxi Fenghan Trading — authorized Dongfeng EV truck exporter. WhatsApp: +86 153 1943 1311 | Email: sales@fenghan-trade.com | dongfengevtrucks.com
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