Qiyuan Green Power says Oyu Tolgoi battery swapping system meeting expectations
Since October 2025, Rio Tinto Group has been using a battery swapping system supplied by Shanghai Qiyuan Green Power Technology at its Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold operation in Mongolia to maintain operation of a fleet of eight 91-t Tonly DTE145 battery electric wide body mining trucks. It is used together with 13 800 kWh batteries. Recently, the Chinese technology company, part of SPIC, shared some updates on the project.
It says that from December to February, the temperature in Mongolia is regularly as low as minus 30°C, and that the extreme conditions such as cold, but also fog and dust, are frequent, which has proven to be a great test for the stability of the charging and swapping system.
In order to solve the pain point of battery activity decline in extremely cold environments, Qiyuan customised a thermal management system for batteries, and also monitors the battery status in real time through its cloud platform, while at the same time it says it ensures that the battery can still maintain strong charging and discharging efficiency in the low temperature environments with the help of centralised management and keeping the actual charging in an enclosed environment.
Up to now, it says the Qiyuan charging and swapping system has been in stable operation at Oyu Tolgoi for months, and that the eight electric mining trucks have completed automatic battery swapping 1,900 times, with the 13 sets of 800 kWh power batteries charged and discharged continuously in cycles, with no major faults and no spare parts replacements throughout the process, which it says confirms the ability of the system to adapt to extreme cold.
The company adds: “The seven minute fast battery swap mode minimises the downtime of mining trucks, which can save nearly three hours of charging time per day compared with the traditional charging mode, and the transportation efficiency has increased by about 14%, which strongly supports the orderly progress of the construction of tailings dams and overburden transportation tasks in the mining area.”
It also refers to the bigger picture for the technology, with the potential to help address Rio Tinto’s Scope 1 (direct greenhouse gas emissions) carbon footprint. In this case, the electrification transformation of the transportation fleet has reduced fuel consumption by about 240 t so far, equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 720 t, and therefore helping Rio Tinto achieve its goal of combining cost effective technology with reducing carbon emissions in mining.
There have been challenges – before the delivery of the solution, Rio Tinto had put forward 47 detailed safety requirements based on its strict OT on-site operation standards, covering multiple dimensions such as battery swap fault handling, equipment maintenance safety, and power isolation. Qiyuan Green Power says it has fulfilled these in full, including adding 12 new safety hardware elements to the battery swap station, plus building additional facilities on-site to guide front-line workers in managing the technical aspects of the system. All the seals of the battery swap station are regularly inspected one by one, and an outdoor seal acceptance of the battery swap station has been completed, significantly improving its operational safety index.
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