4454 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

Economic and Technical Evaluation of Solar-Assisted

Water Pump Stations for Mining Applications:
A Case of Study
Mario Montorfano, Daniel Sbarbaro, Senior Member, IEEE, and Luis Morán, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—Nowadays, energy and water are some of the most this increasing demand, the industry is committed to seek new
important issues facing the mining industry. Many mines are lo- sources such as seawater. Nowadays, the water from the sea
cated in desert areas, and they need to pump water from isolated
constitutes only the 8% of the total fresh-water withdrawals
wells or from the ocean. Therefore, in order to satisfy the water
demand, many high-power water pump stations are required. The made by Chilean copper industry, a value which is expected
operation of these systems is expensive due to the high energy to increase in the near future. As a matter of fact, seawater
cost. This paper presents a case of study of a solar photovoltaic consumption in copper mining increased 37% between 2012 and
(PV) system to assist the operation of a water pump station of a 2011, and by 2021, it will account 23.9% of the total fresh-water
mineral processing operation in Chile. An economical analysis is consumption [2]. In order to transport water, mining companies
carried out with respect to different design variables and the per-
centage of the total power required for operating the system in the have invested in water pump stations located in distant places in
less favorable conditions (degree of assistance). It is demonstrated the desert and on the ocean shores. These pump stations require
that the maximum net present value is obtained for the maximum several megawatts due to water volume, altitude, and distances
assistance, i.e., supplying the full energy in the less favorable con- involved.
ditions. However, the internal rate of return will be maximized at Renewable energies are becoming an attractive alternative for
the point where the system only supplies the energy to satisfy the
full demand at the most favorable conditions. Finally, the study mining companies as a cost-efficient energy source to address
shows that from an economical point of view, PV technology is an the challenge of improving their cost structure and diminishing
attractive alternative to support the mining operation at present the risk associated with the volatility of the energy prices [3].
time. Chile has a privileged position in terms of the abundance of
Index Terms—Mining industry, power generation economics, solar resources, and recently, many mines have started to adopt
pumps, solar power generation. thermal and photovoltaic (PV) technologies in their operations
[4], [5].
In order to decrease the operational costs associated with
I. INTRODUCTION
the electrical energy required to drive pumps, PV solar plants
INING operations located in remote deserted areas are
M facing important challenges in order to deal with scarce
water resources and high energy cost. According to Ernst &
represent an attractive solution. This study proposes the use of
PV systems to assist the operation of pumps stations, i.e., they
do not replace existing systems but only supply energy during
Young [1], the access to water and energy is within the ten those periods with solar radiation.
most important risks facing the mining industry especially for Technoeconomic analysis of large PV system addressing dif-
projects in South America and Africa. In Chile, the energy ferent scenarios has been carried out by several researchers. For
costs have increased by 11% annually since 2000, being the instance, a performance evaluation and cost-benefit analysis of
electricity price one of the highest in Latin America due to the large solar PV installations for dwelling units in a Western Aus-
reliance on fossil fuels. Water consumption in Chile’s copper tralia mining company in terms of carbon tax and mounting
mining industry will increase 66% by 2025 [2]. In order to satisfy methods is presented in [6]. In [7], Monte Carlo methods along
with investment models have been proposed to analyze large-
Manuscript received July 31, 2015; revised December 4, 2015 and March scale solar PV projects for Ontario, Canada. This study analyzes
14, 2016; accepted April 11, 2016. Date of publication May 17, 2016; date of the expected profitability in terms of internal rate of return (IRR)
current version September 16, 2016. Paper 2015-MIC-0659.R2, presented at and net present value (NPV) of a PV project to assist the oper-
the 2015 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Addison, TX,
USA, Oct. 18–22, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ation of pump stations in a regulated system. In this case, the
INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS the Mining Committee of the IEEE Industry Applica- incomes of the project will be associated with substitution of
tions Society. This work was supported by the Solar Energy Research Center energy bought at a marginal cost (MC) and selling of energy
(SERC-Chile) under Grant FONDAP #15110019.
D. Sbarbaro and L. Moran are with the Department of Electrical Engi- excess at the average market price (AMP).
neering, Universidad de Concepción, 4070409 Concepción, Chile (e-mail: This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
dsbarbar@udec.cl; mmoran@udec.cl). methodology to be used. Section III presents the design speci-
M. Montorfano is with Inforsa, Nacimiento, Chile (e-mail: mmotorfarno@
udec.cl). fications and main considerations imposed by this application.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online Section IV describes the main component of the proposed sys-
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. tem. Section V presents the economic evaluation and sensitivity
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2016.2569415
analysis. In Section VI, some final remarks are given.

0093-9994 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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MONTORFANO et al.: ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL EVALUATION OF SOLAR-ASSISTED WATER PUMP STATIONS 4455

TABLE I
STATIONS AND THEIR TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Station Number of Motors Power per motor [kW]

Pump station 0 9 448

(Water catchment)
Pump station 1 8 1.865
Pump station 2 8 1.865
Pump station 3 7 1.343

II. GENERAL METHODOLOGY

In order to carry out the technical and economical analysis,
Fig. 1. Histogram of power demand during one month (September).
the following steps were developed.
1) Gathering preliminary information: Collect information
TABLE II
related to the power demand, solar radiations, average OPERATING POWER REGIMES
temperatures, and cloudiness over several years of
operation. Analyze the variability of the data and define
Power range [MW] Hours [h] % month
regions of operations. In addition, it is necessary to know
the cost of the energy at the locations of pump stations P > 4.5 139 57.90
3.5 < P < 4.5 93 38.75
and the market price of the energy at the same point,
2 < P < 3.5 6 2.5
since the excess of energy can be sold. P <2 2 0.8
2) Technical analysis: Based on the information obtained in Total 240 100
step 1, the design of a PV system considering a given
level of assistance must be carried out. At this stage, it is
necessary to define the architecture, PV panels, supporting from one of the 3.45-kV bars associated with pump station 3
structures, inverters, and transformers. and is summarized in the histogram depicted in Fig. 1.
3) Economical model and analysis: Based on the cost struc- The histogram shows that the consumption can be classified
ture and the estimated benefits, an economical evaluation in four regions of operations (see Fig. 1). The region with power
can be carried out by considering different profitability consumption higher than 4.5 MW represents the operation
indices. associated with the high water rate, while the region with con-
sumption in the range of (3.5 MW, 4.5 MW) is associated with
the lower water rate. Regions with power consumption smaller
III. PRELIMINARY INFORMATION
than 3 MW are not relevant for this study. The number of hours
This section describes the main considerations that have to be associated with each regime during one month (September) is
taken into account in order to design the solar-assisted system. summarized in Table II.
We will consider a Chilean mine located in the north of the coun- This analysis concluded that most of the time motors work
try, which has several water pump stations to transport seawater at power higher than 4.5 MW. The mean value of the required
to their processes as described in the following sections. power is 5.1 MW, i.e., near their rated values. Similar values
were found for the other motors associated with pump station 3.
A. Pump Stations
The seawater is transported through a pipeline of 145 km of B. Solar Resources
length. In order to transport the water, four pump stations are In order to have an estimate of the solar resources, it is nec-
required: one for pumping the water from the sea and the rest for essary to know the exact location of the pump station 3. In this
transporting the water to the processes. Pump stations 1 and 2 are case, the location is Latitude: 22.98◦ S, Longitude: 69.15◦ O,
located 50 km away from the water catchment and pump station Altitude: 2116 m. With this information, the global horizontal
3 at 120 km. Since pump station 3 is closer to the mine site, irradiance (GHI) can be obtained from [8]; Fig. 2 shows the
it was selected as case of study. Each pump station has several values of GHI for one year. This index represents the radiation
pumps driven by a set of induction motors, as summarized in received from above by a surface horizontal to the ground and
Table I. Pump station 3 has two set of motors, having four and includes the direct and diffuse radiation. As seen in Fig. 2, the
three units, each connected to 3.45-kV bars. minimum value is obtained in June.
The pump stations operate according to the required water In addition, it is necessary to consider the number of direct
demand, having normally two regimes, either 630 or 1200 L/s. sun hours. Fig. 3 shows that the total hourly radiation for June is
In order to analyze the power demand during the period with about eight effective sun hours, i.e. the number of hours where
sunlight, as described in Section III-B, a set of power consump- the hourly mean radiation is higher than 197 W/m2 . The cloudi-
tion data for one month of operation (September) was obtained ness index is a value between 0 and 1 and provides information

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4456 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

Fig. 2. GHI at the pump station location. Fig. 5. MC forecast.

C. Energy Costs and Prices

Since PV systems do not always generate energy, it is neces-
sary to consider the cost of buying energy when the PV system is
not able to supply it, and the price of selling energy when the PV
system generates more than the required energy for pumping.
Thus, the MC and the AMP of MWh should be considered. The
MC represents the cost of supplying an extra generating unit to
the system. It is obtained by satisfying the demand by adding
generators starting from the cheapest generators, and being the
generator with the highest MC that fixes the price. In this study,
Fig. 3. Total hourly radiation (June). the monthly forecast carried out by the Chilean regulatory
agency Independant System Operators (CEDEC)-Norte Grande
Interconnected System Generation (SING) for the period
2015–2029, and depicted in Fig. 5, is considered [11].
The AMP is obtained from the contracts informed by the
power generating company at the time of carrying out this study,
and it was 97.93 [US$/MWh] [12]. The main assumption of this
study is that the energy will be bought at the MC and sold at
AMP.

IV. TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

In order to satisfy the power demand, a PV plant is designed
Fig. 4. Monthly average outdoor temperature. to supply a percentage of the total required power by the pump
station during the less favorable conditions in terms of solar
radiation. This percentage is defined as degree of assistance.
about the fraction of time that the site was covered by clouds Thus, the system was initially sized considering the month with
during an hour or month. This index is defined as the ratio be- less radiation. Since the PV plant is located in the southern
tween the diffusive daily radiation and daily global radiation. It hemisphere June is the month with the lowest radiation. This
can be calculated by using different measurement methods such case represents 100% of assistance, i.e., the system will supply
as direct radiative measurements, satellites images, and temper- all the energy required by the pump station during 8 h in the
ature measurements [9]. The estimated cloudiness index used in less favorable conditions. The main characteristics of the design
this study can be obtained by the Solar resource explorer using associated with the pump station 3 with a rated power of 9.4
the information of the GOES EAST and MODIS satellites [10]. MW are the following.
The method calculates first the clear sky radiation for a given 1) Solar panels: Polycrystalline panels of Pp = 310 W were
location, and a cloud index is derived from the pixel value of the considered since their cost is smaller compared with other
satellite images. The ground global radiation is then estimated technologies. Additionally, over 80% of the big instal-
by reducing the clear sky radiation by the cloud cover. The mean lations in Chile have selected this technology due to its
value of this index for the last eight years is 0.01%, i.e., clouds favorable cost ratio in price per watt on the system level
do not have significant effects. [13]. A decrease of 0.8% annually is considered for the
Finally, another important factor is the outdoor temperature, efficiency of the panels due to aging and other factors [14].
since it affects the efficiency of the solar panels. As seen in Fig. 4, 2) Power inverters: The configuration considers centralized
the average outdoor temperature is 20 ◦ C and the variations are inverters of 1 MW, due to their smaller cost to produce
within ±5 ◦ C range. one watt in ac current, it has fewer components and higher

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MONTORFANO et al.: ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL EVALUATION OF SOLAR-ASSISTED WATER PUMP STATIONS 4457

reliability, and it has demonstrated to be very effective

for large systems where the radiation is similar in all
panels [15], [16]. In this study, the inverter SG1000TS-M
of SunGrow is considered. The minimum voltage for
operation is 460 V and its efficiency is 0.98. Inverters have
much shorter field mean time between failure than the
solar panels, and the typical warranties last between five
and ten years [17], [18]. The experience of large utility-
scale PV generating plants in desert areas shows that the
unscheduled maintenance cost associated with inverters
can represent more than the 50% of the total cost [19].
3) Tracking system: This study considers just a one-axis
tracking system. Even though a two-axis tracking sys-
tem could provide a 4% more power, but at expense of a
higher investment cost and also surface area for the instal- Fig. 6. Generated energy for different degrees of assistance.
lation [20]. It is considered that the required land for the
installation of the solar panels is property of the project efficiency (ηti ), the GHI, and the surface covered by the PV
owner and they do not have any alternative use. panels (Sp )
4) General structure: The rated output power of the array
under standard conditions, in watts, can be estimated as Ep (k) = ηp (k) · ηti · Sp · GHI(k). (4)
follows:
The percentage of assistance is defined as
Em
Parray = (1)
PSH · η · fd Êp
A= · 100 (5)
where Em is the required power per day, PSH are the peak Em
solar hours (worst month = 4.72 h/day), η = 0.97 is the
where Êp = Ep (k̂) is the energy generated at the less favorable
efficiency of the subsystem including power transmission
conditions obtained at month k̂. The different conditions along
loss and inverters efficiency, and fd = 0.83 is a dimen-
the months for different degrees of assistance are illustrated in
sionless derating factor taking into account the effect of
Fig. 6. For 100% assistance, there will be no need to buy energy
soiling, temperature, and safety margin. Thus, the number
during the PV operation.
of required solar panels is given by Parray /Pp = 64811. In
The detailed cost structure for a PV project can be found,
order to provide the minimum voltage for the operation
for instance, in [21] and [22], and in this study, the following
of the inverter and deliver the required energy, the general
investment costs were considered:
structure was designed with 15 sectors. Each sector con-
siders a 1-MW inverter and 4560 solar panels distributed C = Nsp · Psp + Ninv · Pinv + Nst · Pst + Ce + Is + Ceng
in 240 strings of 19 panels each connected in parallel to (6)
the inverter. where C is the total investment cost, Nsp is the number of solar
panels, Psp is their price, Ninv in the number of inverters, Pinv
V. ECONOMICAL ANALYSIS is the associated price, Nst is the number of solar trackers and
The profitability of the investment is analyzed in terms of the mounting systems, Pst is their price, Ce is the cost of electrical
IRR and NPV. The analysis considers 20 years for the project system (wire and cables, grounding, system protection equip-
life time and also a discount rate of 10%, which is normally ment, conduits, junction boxes, disconnect switches), Ceng is
used for project associated with renewable energies [4] The MC the engineering cost, and Is is the installation cost including
and AMP are the ones obtained in Section II. The income (I) site preparation, mechanical mounting, support structures, and
produced by the project at month k considers the energy used stacking. The operational cost is given by
to drive the pumps and the surplus sold at AMP: OC = Ts + Cs + R (7)
I(k) = Ep (k) · MC + γ(Ep (k) − Em ) · AMP (2)
where Ts is the cost associated with the technical staff, Cs is
where Em is the demanded energy, and Ep (k) is the energy the cleaning staff, and R is the replacement cost associated with
generated by the PV system during month k. The function inverters and panels. The replacement costs consider preventive
γ(Ep (k) − Em ) is defined as follows: maintenance schedules considering replacements of key com-
 ponents associated with inverters, tracking systems, and protec-
Ep (k) − Em , (Ep (k) − Em ) ≥ 0 tions. The annual cost associated with maintenance is estimated
γ(Ep (k) − Em ) =
0, (Ep (k) − Em ) < 0. as the 0.07% of the capital investment [19]. The replacements of
(3) 60 panels per year and 50% of the inverters are also considered.
The energy generated by the system depends on the panel’s The replacement of inverters is considered at the 7th and 15th
efficiency (ηp (k)), the power transmission and inverter year of operation of the system.

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4458 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016

TABLE III
INVESTMENTS AND OPERATIONAL COSTS

Item US$/unit item US$ item US$/month

P sp 164 Ce 847 000 Ts 5760

Pin v 165 000 Cen g 45 000 Cs 5000
P st 2200 Is 571 500

TABLE IV
MAIN FINANCIAL INDICATORS

Indicator value
Fig. 8. NPV for different percentages of assistance.
NPV 6 500 000 US$
IRR 14.01
Payback 6.48 years

Fig. 9. IRR for different percentages of assistance.

the AMP. Thus, it is interesting to analyze the profitability of the

Fig. 7. Sensitivity analysis.
project with respect to the percentage of the full power required
in the less favorable conditions, i.e., degree of assistance. The
ANV has a monotonic behavior with respect to the percentage
Table III summarizes the values of the operational and
of assistance since an increase of the investment in solar panels
investments costs. The prices for solar panels, inverters, solar
will increase the production of energy. As seen in Fig. 8, at 50%,
trackers, and electrical system are estimated considering
there is an inflection point, since the system starts to sell energy
market prices. The engineering cost is estimated based on
to the power distribution system and the slope of the curve
local engineering rates. The installation cost is estimated as the
decreases slightly as a result of the small value of the AMP with
0.5% of the panels cost. The cost associated with technical and
respect to the MC. The maximum value for the NPV is obtained
cleaning staff considers the labor cost for a team of 25 cleaning
for a system designed to satisfy the full power requirement in
people and four technical staff.
the less favorable conditions, i.e., 100% of assistance.
The results for 100% of assistance, i.e., A = 100, are summa-
The IRR, however, presents a maximum around 50% corre-
rized in Table IV. The project has a positive NPV and the IRR
sponding precisely to the inflection point of the NPV, as seen
is higher than the discount rate and the payback of the project is
in Fig. 9. This result is obtained since the selling price (AMP)
6.5 years.
is smaller than MC associated to the saved energy. It is worth
It is necessary to analyze how the profitability of this project
pointing out that this level of assistance means that no energy
is affected by the different factors such as operational costs,
will be sold at the most favorable irradiation conditions. These
initial investment, panel cost, and energy prices.
results have shown that the optimal size of the system to assist
The effects of these factors in terms of percentage variations
the pump operations will depend on the selling and buying elec-
over the NPV are depicted in Fig. 7. As seen in Fig. 7, the
tricity prices and financial criteria considered for carrying out
profitability of the project is influenced mainly by the initial
the evaluation. Therefore, solar-assisted energy sources are an
investment and the energy prices. Both variables are critical;
attractive solution to be considered by the mining companies,
variations larger than 20% can compromise the economical fea-
irrespective of the financial criteria used for the evaluation.
sibility of the project. The panel price is also an important cost
since the 60% of the initial investment is associated with the
solar panels. The rest of the variables have less impact, but they VI. CONCLUSION
are also important, and they need to be considered in the analysis The current importance of water and energy issues in the
since they may have larger variations. mining sectors is leading to consider the use of nonconventional
Since the system was designed to provide the full power energy and water sources. In Chile, in particular, this problem is
at the less favorable conditions, it will provide a surplus of more acute due to the location of the most important mines and
energy at the most favorable conditions, which will be sold at the high cost of the electrical energy. This study has presented

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MONTORFANO et al.: ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL EVALUATION OF SOLAR-ASSISTED WATER PUMP STATIONS 4459

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2011. in 1990.
[15] AE Solar, “Advantages of distributed and central architectures in solar Since 1990, he has been with the Electrical En-
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[16] P. Suskis, “Overview of the photovoltaic system topologies,” Riga Tech. where he is currently a Professor. He has written and
Univ., Riga, Latvia, Tech. Rep. no. 223–226, 2013. published more than 60 papers in active power filters
[17] J. Flicker, R. Kaplar, M. Marinella, and J. Granata, “PV inverter perfor- and static Var compensators in IEEE TRANSACTIONS.
mance and reliability: What is the role of the bus capacitor? in Proc. IEEE He has extensive consulting experience in the mining industry, especially in the
38th Photovolt. Spec. Conf., 2012, pp. 1–3. application of medium voltage ac drives, large-power cycloconverter drives for
[18] P. Zhang, W. Li, S. Li, Y. Wang, and W. Xiao, “Reliability assessment of semi-autogenous grinding mills, and power quality issues.
photovoltaic power systems: Review of current status and future perspec- Dr. Morán was an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS on Power
tives,” Appl. Energy, vol. 104, pp. 822–833, 2013. Electronics from 1997 to 2001. In 1998, he received the City of Con-
[19] L. M. Moore and H. N. Post, “Five years of operating experience at a cepción Medal of Honor for achievement in applied research. In 2012, he
large, utility-scale photovoltaic generating plant,” Prog. Photovolt., Res. was nominated as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Industry Applications
Appl., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 249–259, 2008. Society.

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