Mining in North America is a massive industry, which has seen a crucial push towards the use of clean energy in the last 10 years. This shift was noticed by Adria Power Systems back in 2012 when it was a leader in moving the industry towards the electrification of heavy-duty mining equipment. Now in 2023, big names in the mining industry have also made the move towards electrifying their mining machinery so the market is becoming increasingly competitive. We got the chance to catch up again with Jean-François Couillard, President of Adria Power Systems, to see how the company is staying ahead of the game as a trusted brand for its high-powered electrical equipment.
Located in Rouyn-Noranda, Adria designs and manufactures distribution and electrical power products for the industrial, commercial, and mining sectors. With more than 25 years of experience, Adria leads the way with its power solutions which are reliable, robust, and adaptable to meet the needs of its customers. Adria offers a variety of high-powered systems and machinery including medium-voltage portable charging substations, mine power centres, monobloc skid-mounted substations, portable switchgear, portable medium-voltage switches, and junction boxes – to name just a few. Adria designs its products with the customer in mind and has built a sturdy foundation as a supplier of safe, durable, efficient, and high-quality equipment. This is especially pertinent in the mining industry where equipment must deal with harsh conditions including humidity, dust, and severe vibrations. Manufacturers such as Adria must build their products to ensure that they can withstand these conditions and continue to be effective in providing power solutions. For Adria, every system is designed with the most challenging mining conditions in mind, and so Adria continues to be a key supplier across the mining industry as it steadily moves towards a more sustainable way of operating.
A crucial feature of Adria’s charging stations is that they can facilitate OEMs of a variety of voltages. The adaptability of the equipment produced by Adria is key to their continued success. The high-power systems have multiple outputs all of which produce a consistent level of low-voltage power. However, these low-voltage outputs can be bridged together to produce a higher output across the system. This is crucial for its adaptability for a variety of OEMs as the charger can be reduced or increased based on appliance need, rather than needing a whole new charging system. The charging stations also provide a step-up and step-down facility to work in a larger system to ensure that power can extend throughout every site of operation. This adaptability works towards the future of electrifying the industry; when new technologies are developed, the same systems created by Adria can be used by joining outputs together to meet the potential needs of higher-output appliances of the future. Furthermore, Adria has recently launched a new generation of high-power chargers, which will provide more advanced features for its customers and shows its commitment to constantly developing its systems towards the future.
What sets Adria apart from its competitors in the ever-competitive world of electrical solutions is that it is not tied to any singular OEM, meaning it can provide universal charging systems for a variety of markets. This is crucial as many OEMs began working with commercial charging solutions that, whilst cheaper, do not stand the test of time and become costly to replace causing ricocheting effects down the mining supply chains. Therefore, as Adria’s charging systems are built for their reliability and robustness, many OEMs are shifting over to Adria’s solutions which are compatible with a variety of applications, unlike many brand-specific ones. This makes them the chosen charging solution provider over many competitors. Adria is looking to improve clean energy solutions across the industry with equipment that is operational with many appliances, rather than being exclusively used for one brand which does not benefit the global push towards sustainability in mining.
We have seen Adria’s role as a leader in the mining industry expand as it has been tasked to help create a 1-Megawatt bi-directional charging system with 4 bridgeable outputs as part of a federal-provincial government electrification program. In collaboration with several other companies, the project is with Nouveau Mode Graphite’s Matawinie Project and will provide a new electric charging system to help develop the rapid charging infrastructure for heavy vehicles in the open-pit mining industry. The goal is to power a Western Star 6900XD truck which has a 40-ton capacity and will allow Adria to test out their charging system in an industry-first collaboration towards the future of mine electrification. If successful, Adria will have produced one of the most advanced mining charging systems available on the market.
As Adria looks towards the future, it is expecting to see an increase in demand for charging infrastructure, especially in the underground mining industry. An increase in demand for clean energy across the mining industry will require more solid charging infrastructures to take pressure off the existing electrical infrastructure of the mine, which Adria aims to facilitate with their continuously developing electrical solutions. Furthermore, the industry is evolving towards standardisation. It came as The Global Mining Guidelines Group (GMG) recently published new guidelines for the standardisation of the implementation of electric machinery across the mining industry. This is set to bring new challenges to mining, but challenges that Adria takes in its stride having spent the last 10 years preparing to assist in the inevitable push towards standardisation. Therefore, Adria will continue to develop the further standardisation of the industry, which ultimately helps to achieve the company’s overarching goal of providing more sustainable solutions across the globe.
Overall, the mining industry is a mature market, but it is actively responding to the shifting nature of the world and doing its part to develop towards the future of clean energy. The industry acknowledges that it can never be fully sustainable due to the mining of finite resources, however, companies such as Adria are providing solutions that are making a difference across a multitude of industries including mining. By facilitating the development of the mining industry through its crucial work to provide reliable, robust, and adaptable charging systems, Adria leads the way as a company that is always ahead of the curve pushing industries towards a sustainable future. We can’t wait to see what Adria Power Systems does next, and how it continues to expand across even more sectors as a pioneer for clean energy.
