Loy yang

The Loy Yang open cut brown coal mine in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, near Traralgon, 165 kilometres east of Melbourne, is owned and operated by AGL Energy Limited. AGL Energy also own and operate the adjacent 2,210 megawatt Loy Yang A power station as well as the nearby Loy Yang B power station, both operate on the coal mined from the Loy Yang mine. The mine and its adjacent power station, that produces 30 percent of Victoria's power needs, employs around 600 personnel.

Loy Yang is a Cost Efficient Accessible Brown Coal Mine
The Loy Yang coal mine and power stations covers an area of 800 hectares on which it has reserves totalling 168 billion tonnes and mines, on average, around 30 million tonnes each year. The overburden covering the coal seam is between five and 24 metres thick with the coal seam thickness averaging around 180 metres. The brown coal deposit, that is estimated to be about 15 to 30 million years old , has a low sulphur trace element count and a low ash content of only about two percent. Despite it being a high moisture soft brown coal it is the most accessible in Victoria and quite cost efficient, therefore ideal for the generation of electricity.

Massive Electric Powered Dredgers Excavate Loy Yang Coal
The Loy Yang open cut brown coal mining operation uses four electric powered bucket wheel dredgers, 190 metres long and 50 metres high. Each one weighing around 5,000 tonnes and able to excavate 4,000 tonnes of coal an hour or over one tonne of coal a second. The coal is taken from the mine to the power station by 15 kilometres of conveyors that carry the coal at speeds of 5.3 metres a second to an 80,000 tonne capacity bunker. The coal is crushed by rotary crushers that can handle 2,500 tonnes an hour each before it is delivered to the power station. At the current rate of usage the coal in reserve at the Loy Yang mine is expected to last for 40 years. Travelling stackers are used at the overburden dump where they take overburden from the conveyors and have it spread in readiness for land rehabilitation. Coal dredgers handle 2,500 cubic metres of overburden an hour.

Loy Yang Mine Began Operations in 1982
Coal mining began at the Loy Yang Mine in 1982 at an area known then as block one and it was developed in a northerly direction. The present operation began in 1992 and is called block two and it has an easterly development. Mining is expected to take place in Block three, with a southern development direction in 2027.

The coal from the Loy Yang mine is used to boil water at the two power stations. The steam that comes from the boiling water is forced through high pressure jets which turns the turbine blades which are part of a massive generator. The whirring generator produces electricity that is supplied to customers via a transmission network that stretches across Victoria.

AGL began business providing gas street lighting in Sydney in 1841. In 2012 it successfully created sufficient solar power to light up the Skipping Girl sign. It is one of Australia's leading renewable energy organisations.
†