The Dargues Gold Mine is located approximately 60km southeast of Canberra, 13km south of Braidwood and immediately north of the village of Majors Creek. The operation is run by Diversified Minerals.

JTMEC Engineering were engaged to carry out power system modelling and analysis of the mine 22kV & 11kV distribution systems to identify and resolve the underlying power quality issues. We generated a power system model for the site based on available site data and network authority information on ETAP and carried out power systems analysis for load flow, fault level and protection grading, to generate new protection settings for the mine power supply feeder, RMU and underground substations and integrated these protection setting changes to ensure proper discrimination between protection relays.

JTMEC also modelled the 22kV power factor controller using PSSU and python scripting and used correlation analysis to optimise the settings of the power factor controller.

Data logging was set up for a three month period to monitor ongoing power quality and to verify higher power availability for the mine.