HIGHLUX Featured in The Australian Mining Review November Edition!
Follow Link to online magazine here
Solar Lighting for Smarter Mining
HIGHLUX provides solar lighting solutions designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the Australian Mining Industry. Our solar products provide reliable, high-performance lighting in hot, dusty and cyclone-prone environments. Our solutions are cost effective, fast to deliver, safe and easy to install and maintain.
Solar Mining Range
SOLANOVA
Street & Car Park
Our signature solar lighting system the SOLANOVA is the first and only Australian Made solar street-light.
SOLANOVA is simple, powerful, programable & adaptable. Its modular design supports a range of luminaires and battery capacities and can add on an oversized panel when needed.
Pathway
HIGHLUX is a distributor for the Australian-Made Solar Bollard with an IP68 rating to keep out the dust and debris of the mining environment.
A multi-award-winning Solar Bollard has a track record of more than a decade with our Tier 1 mines and is exported globally for oil and gas industries.
SOLABLADE
Open Area
SOLABLADE is our cost-effective, all-in-one overhead area light.
A versatile and cost-effective overhead solution with motion-sensing.
SOLABATON
Shelter & Tunnel
Our SOLABATON is an effective way to illuminate covered areas around camp as well as remote shipping containers, workshops and storage facilities.
Customisable to run day and night or supplied with a pneumatic switch.
Australian SOLANOVA in the Mining Industry
The feature photograph in the Australian Mining Review November 2024 is of our signature solar lighting system the SOLANOVA. In the photo is the SOLANOVA Gen 2 with a Sylvania StreetLED 3 luminaire, installed on a 6m galvanised see-saw pole attached to a relocatable concrete block.
SOLANOVA has been used on mine sites to illuminate bus and light-vehicle parking areas, explosives storage areas, roads, intersections, entrances, and open spaces.
Installed at 6m height on a see-saw pole for safe and simple installation from the ground.
SOLANOVA is a wholly stand-alone system with all components, including battery, safely housed up behind the solar panel for a lift-on installation, easy access to all components, and easy upgrades when the time comes.
Explosives Magazine Christmas Creek WA
Nickel Mine Mount Keith WA
Loy Yang Power Station VIC
SOLANOVA Firsts in Mining
The very first SOLANOVA in the mining industry for HIGHLUX was in 2014 for the Alkane Resources Mine De-watering dam (NSW).
Photo: SOLANOVA with Grah luminaire, installed on 6m pole with standard cage foundation at Alkane Dewatering Dam NSW 2014
In 2018, we sent our first SOLANOVA on a relocatable block to Glencore for the McArthur River Mine (NT).
Photo: SOLANOVA with Grah luminaire, installed on 6m pole on relocatable block at road intersection at McArthur River Mine NT 2018
Industrial Grade
Solar Bollards for Mine Camps
At camp, Solar Bollard Lighting is used to illuminate pathways to Australian Standards for staff to walk safely between the dongas, the mess and other shared amenities.
The industrial grade design includes a heavy-duty anodised aluminium pole, stainless steel 316 fasteners, and the highest-grade available UV-resistant polycarbonate.
Peninsular Palms Dampier WA
Christmas Creek WA
Turtle-Friendly Varanus Island WA
Gorgon Plant Barrow Island WA
Windawarri Lodge WA
Sunrise Dam Gold Mine WA
Walking Track Carrapateena WA
Umoona Opal Mine SA
Carrapateena Mine SA
Wildlife Friendly & Turtle Friendly Solar Bollards
When it comes to outdoor lighting, the lighting industry has come a long way in understanding the parameters to protect our precious ecosystems. Ongoing discussion and muti-sector input continues to formulate effective public policy for expectations of the lighting industry.
HIGHLUX uses available resources to guide our product design, and our range of offerings to meet or exceed industry standards on ecologically-friendly parameters. These include the ASNZS lighting standards via the Australian Lighting Council covering expectations of the industry on matters such as obtrusive lighting, light spill and light waste, DarkSky Australian chapter specific to up-lighting and light pollution, as well as the Australian National Light Pollution Guidelines for Wildlife.
While there is no globally recognised set of rules to cover off the many different environments and ecosystems, there is agreement and evidence for key principles, the best of which is to “light only where you need and nowhere else”. It is common for the mining sector to approach HIGHLUX with their own set of environmentally friendly parameters, which we have found meet or exceed current approaches. In each case, HIGHLUX is able to accommodate. The manufacturer of our Solar Bollard, Solar Bollard Lighting, has a production line as a made-to-order product to ”fit” within standard lead times (~10 working days from receipt of order) to accommodate a mining specification.
For example, the Chevron Gorgon LNG Plant on Barrow Island requested the Wildlife Friendly (WLF) Solar Bollard. The specifications were a colour temperature of warm white (3000K), the colour temperature below the standard of natural white (4000K), and the poles to be powder-coated in black to minimise reflection of the light (reducing light spill and light waste). At 1m installed height, this height is also in line with WLF being “close to the ground”, on balance with being an effective pedestrian light along the pathway.
Within the Wildlife Friendly space, is the Turtle Friendly lighting which is a different light wavelength which many would recognise as the amber or red lighting (600-615nm). The amber hue is specific to turtle migration and breeding pathways.
Outside the main mine camp area of the mine site on Varanus Island (WA) are a set of 40cm-high Solar Bollards in the Turtle Friendly 600-615nm. The entrance to the area spills out onto the beach where the turtles will be exposed to. It is not just the amber colour of the light that makes these Turtle-Friendly, it is also the installed height of the Solar Bollard (as low to the ground as possible minimises the distance the light can be seen from and reduces the light splay), their spacing and positions (light only where needed). As you look at the entrance from the beach, there is a minimalist feel of the set to guide staff into the mess and sleeping quarters.
Solar Bollards on Relocatable Block
The harsh conditions of rural and remote Australia are well-known to those in the Mining Industry and suppliers of product to the industry. The Solar Bollard has had more than 15 years of lighting in these environments and with this real-life experience has driven innovation and design enhancements. In particular – the IP68 full-sealed head design (2018), and the careful selection and testing of the polycarbonate material on the head to perform optimally in the more severe solar regions.
The hard, rocky, dusty and hot conditions have industry teams looking for cost-effective ways to ”get the lights out and doing their job”. One of the ways to achieve this is to have the base-plate-mounted bollard attached to a free-standing block.
Blocks are made local to the installation site and arrive with pre-drilled and perfectly positioned bolts to slip the bollard over the three points. fasten the nuts, pile them onto a truck and drop them along the path.
The best part? No working out in the blazing heat! Who wouldn’t love that?!
SOLABLADE with Throwback Reflector
Fortescue used SOLABLADE for area lighting including at water-stop stations and requested whether the SOLABLADE could be used to light safety signs along the entry road. To create an easy to install solution we designed a back-flow reflector for the SOLABLADE to be installed directly above the sign – fitted to the sign’s pole without having to use an outreach. Quick, simple, effective.
Customising SOLABATON for Mining Applications
Our customer, SRG Global, was fitting out shipping containers for a mine site in 2020. The brief was to fit a solar baton light for internal use in a handful of shipping containers stationed in isolated and remote areas. SRG approached HIGHUX to present the lighting objective and attachment challenges. With stock on-hand, HIGHLUX customized the SOLABATON to operate from a pneumatic switch, as well as packing up a fit-for-purpose set of panel and attachment brackets sets for the solar panel. Since this set, we offer a customisation on the SOLABATON for day/night use, with and without pneumatic switch as needed.
Being able to offer customisations to our standard products means a short lead time for customers for specialized applications, and supports a more cost-effective stock management and quality-control system.