Even the ‘drill, baby, drill’ guys realize electric is the way to go!

Swedish equipment brand Sandvik announced a new battery electric surface drill rig in a bid to create more efficient, cost-effective drilling operations. And, yes – the irony here is delicious!

In fairness, plenty of drill operations use permanent grid connections (read: wired plugs) t operate their drillers – and there are plenty of reasons to drill that don’t involve oil and gas extraction. That said, it’s got to absolutely kill the “drill, baby, drill” people to see highly efficient electric drill rigs coming to market, and the latest concept Sandvik takes things a step further than its plugged-in cousins by adding a battery.

The Sandvik BEV is the first electric drill rig in its size class, and is capable of boring holes up to 229 mm (9 inches) in diameter. The drill blends the autonomy of plug-free power with the non-stop capabilities of a permanent grid connection.

“With the industry shifting towards intelligent, autonomous and emission-free equipment, surface drill rigs need to be reinvented,” explains Lauri Laihanen, Vice President of R&D, Surface Drilling Division, Sandvik AB Mining and Rock Solutions. “This new concept rig elevates electric surface drilling … (and) the battery means greater freedom and flexibility and more efficient use of time, as the rig can drill immediately while the cable is being set up.”

The Sandvik battery pack provides power for up to one hour of drilling or seven hours of tramming. In practice, Sandvik thinks the battery will be used primarily for tramming and boring individual, targeted holes, while the bulk of the pattern will be carried out on grid power.

It’s all great stuff — but Sandvik isn’t stopping at the addition of a battery pack. They’re also innovating on the grid connection side.

Beyond the battery

At Sandvik’s test mine located 40 km northwest of Tampere, Sandvik is dedicating itself to developing more efficient and more sustainable surface drilling at scale — and part of that development is focused on making that grid connection not just safer, but easier, with a thinner, lighter weight cable.

Sandvik designed (the) cable setup to be as effortless as possible. The (180 m) cable tightens itself automatically according to the direction the rig is moved and is wound on a single layer, which enables a thinner, more manageable tether. An operating voltage as high as 1,000 volts also helps enable a lighter cable.

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“Testing of the smaller concept with our construction customers has been very successful and produced valuable feedback,” Laihanen says. “We’ve learned a lot, and now it’s time to apply these learnings to mining, which has its own unique challenges.”

Sandvik will be testing its electric drill rig prototype in real-world surface mining environments in close collaboration with its mining customers.

Electrek’s Take

While there are a lot of people in the equipment and mining space who may scoff at environmental concerns, the quest for improved efficiency and cost reduction among commercial fleet managers knows no ideology. If it’s just as good and cheaper, they’ll buy it. If it’s better and cheaper, they’ll buy two — and battery power is proving to be consistently better, in a broader scope of use cases, than diesel.