Patent ID: 11867063
Assignee: MODULAR MINING SYSTEMS, INC.
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC E  G  H | IPC E  G

Claim 0:
1. A method of centrally controlling power use by machines in a mining environment, comprising:
identifying a set of electrical machines involved in the extraction, processing, and moving of materials that are configured to operate simultaneously during a time period to perform mining operations in the mining environment;
for each electrical machine in the set, retrieving a power requirement for the time period;
determining, based on the power requirements for each of the electrical machines, a predicted power usage during the time period for the set of electrical machines;
comparing the predicted power usage for the set of electrical machines with a threshold power usage; and
if the predicted power usage exceeds the threshold power usage, using a power supply controller to restrict a supply of power to one or more electrical machines in the set of electrical machines so that an actual power usage during the time period does not exceed the threshold power usage,
wherein the one or more electrical machines to which power is restricted are selected based on predetermined relative priorities for the electrical machines in the set, and wherein
if a predetermined type of material is being mined by a given electrical machine, that given electrical machine is accorded a higher priority level than if that machine is not mining the predetermined type of material.