ALROSA's Mirny Road Maintenance Division has come up with a unique solution to extend the use of solar power by installing hybrid stand-alone stations at its remote posts. “This will help to decrease costs and environmental impact while also improving the power supply of the facilities,” the Company said. Conventional diesel power stations have been replaced
to reduce financial and environmental costs. Two hybrid solar power stations costing 3.7 million rubles each, were shipped to Mirny in January.

“ALROSA’s main operations are concentrated in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Far Eastern Russia,” the Company noted. “Winters are long and summers are short there. However, this region is relatively sunny. For cities of Yakutia, the average annual amount of sunshine lies in the range of 1,700-2,000 hours.”

ALROSA further described the stations saying that each solar hybrid station includes a photovoltaic system, batteries to store the excess energy and a backup diesel generator. “It provides enough power to make illumination, communication equipment and appliances work,” the Company said.

ALROSA is now planning to install plants at the maintenance workers' camps at remote road posts Uzhman and Nepa instead of the conventional diesel gensets. This will be done sometime during this month.

Earlier, in 2019, ALROSA had installed one hybrid photovoltaic station for its road maintenance division.

The diamond miner also uses solar energy collectors at the heating system of the base camp of Nyurba MPD. According to ALROSA's ecologists' estimate, the complex has already been able to reduce oil consumption by 85 tonnes and greenhouse gas emissions by 271 tonnes of СО2-equivalent.