With technological, operational and environmental advancements across the sector in the last 12 months, power solutions provider Genus believes greater opportunity is still to come.

As the mining and resources sector heads into a new year, it finds itself on the edge of what might be the most significant system transformation in years.

After decades of maintaining the same transmission world built in the 1970s and ’80s, the past 12 months marked a decisive transition from steady operations to a new era of scale, complexity and accelerated demand.

To understand what this means for the industry, Australian Mining sat down with Genus project director – transmission Beau Stoner to explore his perspective on lessons learned in 2025.

Stoner believes that, for the first time in around four decades, Australia has entered a major transmission construction cycle, with focus still on incremental upgrades instead of large-scale new ones.

“This has meant the industry had to relearn certain things,” Stoner said. “We moved from decades of operations and maintenance into billion-dollar construction projects that haven’t been done in over 40 years.”

That shift has naturally come with growing pains, Stoner said, with supply chains needing to stabilise.

“We’ve worked through probably 80 per cent of those teething issues,” he said. “There’s still another 20 per cent to go as new precincts ramp up into 2026, but the industry is in a far better place than a year ago.”

Amid this cycle, Australia’s power system is also undergoing what is perhaps the most significant structural change in its history.

What was once a relatively simple system built to service homes and heavy industry is now being reshaped at high speed by electrification.

“We’re moving from a simple power system to a very complex one,” Stoner said. “Every time a vehicle is plugged in or a load increases, it needs to be accommodated into an already constrained network.”

This challenge is one in which mining sits at the centre. Site electrification, load growth and new regional demand all intersect with a power system originally built for another era.

“Connecting a mine is the easy part,” Stoner said. “Integrating that load into the network, that’s where the complexity lies.”

Stoner highlighted the fact the ramp-up of electrification capabilities is boosting a demand that few anticipated even three years ago: the rise of hyperscale data centres and artificial intelligence (AI) training clusters.

“In the United States, they’re building two-gigawatt AI clusters,” he said. “That level of demand will come to Australia.

“The network connections required to service them are a huge opportunity and a huge challenge for companies like ours.”

Add to that the electrification of mining fleets and operations, and the convergence becomes clear. Where individual loads once moved independently, they are now growing simultaneously and exponentially.

To deal with the speed of change in the coming year, agility is becoming more important than ever. That’s why Genus is investing heavily to ensure workers are trained for the future.

“We now have a 10-hectare training and assessment facility in WA,” Stoner said. “It’s used to assess new workers and train the next generation of line workers and, as far as I’m aware, it’s the only one like it.”

Equipping the workforce is just one part of keeping up with these rapid changes, as miners and their partners must also adapt to evolving technology, regulatory demands and market pressures.

The pace of change across renewables, electrification, data centres, and end-of-life asset replacement means miners can leverage delivery partners to help solve problems early, adapt quickly and work at the speed the market now requires.

This is where Stoner believes Genus differentiates itself.

“We’re experienced and agile, we’re entrepreneurial problem-solvers,” he said. “Our clients need partners who can move quickly, and that agility is in our DNA.”

Stoner believes the opportunities on Australia’s doorstep are little short of extraordinary, but seizing them will require a different mindset; collaborative, community-driven, technically strong and relentlessly forward-looking.

“By the end of 2026, the industry should be in a very good place going forward,” he said. 

This feature appeared in the February issue of Australian Mining magazine.