Perth energy solutions provider UON has powered into the financial year with its biggest-ever month of energy delivery.
July saw UON add 70 megawatts of power infrastructure to customers’ operations across the WA resources sector. From its Malaga facilities, UON’s Energy rental team deployed, installed and had all the power units operational within the month.
A reflection of the mining sector’s continued confidence, UON’s milestone also recognises the growth and product development of the WA energy solutions provider. Awarded Western Australian Business of the Year in the 2020 WA Business News RISE Awards, UON has sustained is success, further reinforcing its position as the premier provider of energy solutions to the sector.
UON Founder and Chairman, Mark Keogh said the biggest single month in the company’s history was a clear demonstration of UON’s capacity, flexibility and rapid deployment capabilities to directly support our customers.
“The modular ability of our UON SMART™ offering is key to this success and includes customer-specific combinations of battery energy storage systems (BESS), solar photovoltaics (PV) and diesel generators,” Mark said.
“We are seeing a transition in the energy solutions our customers are wanting and we have developed products that able to assist them on their journey to decarbonisation. These are real solutions and available now.”
While mining operations currently have an underlying demand for diesel generation, UON has established unique products that means redeployable renewables are now a real option for customers to include in a rental solution. As the WA deployment partner for Australian solar systems company 5B, UON is able to include a redeployable photo-voltaic energy arrays in its SMART™ solutions.
“The changing nature of energy needed across mining operations and the traditional infrastructure needed for PV arrays, meant solar wasn’t a real option for temporary installation, but now it is,” Mark said.
“Our in-house capabilities to determine the lowest cost of energy, means we can tailor the best solutions to meet our customers’ needs, including harnessing the sun’s energy, without sacrificing the energy security needed.”
Having developed its in house solutions to reliably operate and withstand the harshest of WA’s environments, UON this year secured three technology patents, including its unique Generator Motor Controller (GMC) system.
The GMC is part of family of products that has been developed to provide the scalable, modular, automated, renewable and temperature-controlled solutions that are adapted to the specific operational requirements of clients.
“By creating new technologies like the GMC and then investing in their operational development and testing in-house, we have real solutions available now that significantly help address the fossil fuel challenges being faced by our customers,” Mark said.
“Environmentally, economically and even socially, resources companies are needing to reduce traditional energy inputs on their journey to decarbonisation and we are doing that already.”
Despite COVID, UON has also continued to grow its own operational assets to support its deployment and installation activities.
“We’ve made the investments and done the design work needed to live out our company commitment to customers – that we will keep UON and operational,” Mark said.
“This means we continue to have the gear needed, plus an ongoing pipeline of equipment available.”
UON’s success as a WA manufacturer has helped the company to further expand its in-house manufacturing capability, insulated from many of the international supply chain challenges resulting from COVID-19 disruptions.
As the first wave of the global pandemic hit Western Australia’s mining industry in 2020, and a large number of clients halted their procurement activities, UON seized the opportunity presented and continued manufacturing in its Malaga facilities and purchasing supplies.
This led to a build-up of stocks and consumables, which meant when the demand returned UON could support clients quickly and shorten delivery times.
UON has since further increased the size of its workforce by 60% year on year to continue the delivery of WA created solutions across the state.
“Our continued success is a result of all the members of the UON family and this growing team of people are at the heart of the solutions we deliver. It is their innovation, real operational experience and quality focus that are providing customers with the energy solutions they need.”
