Aeon Metals is turning to the sun to power its proposed Walford Creek copper-cobalt project in North-West Queensland.

The company has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Sun Cable to provide an energy solution for the operation.

Sun Cable has been hitting the headlines for its $22 billion plan to build the world’s largest dispatchable solar and battery power station in the Northern Territory along with a sub-sea cable to carry power to Singapore.

Aeon said it had been undertaking a detailed assessment of a third-party provided solar-plus-diesel power solution as part of the pre-feasibility study on the Walford Creek project.

The planned energy system would provide solar generation capacity, with an accompanying battery storage facility, alongside full back-up/supplementary diesel generation capacity.

The system is to be delivered by Sun Cable under a Build-Own-Operate (BOO) structure.

Aeon said the benefits of this approach included a substantial reduction in projected carbon emissions, substantial operating and pre-production cost savings, and the assurance of full back-up diesel generation capacity.

Aeon Metals recently reported that metallurgical and process workstreams were now well advanced in the pre-feasibility study for Walford Creek.

Further work was needed on back-end cobalt flowsheet routes to keep capital and operating costs down, it said. Completion of the study is now expected in the first quarter of 2021.