Rio Tinto’s Hail Creek Mine recently purchased a P&H 4100XPC AC electric rope shovel, the first of its kind to be commissioned in Australia. Hail Creek Mine already possessed a P&H 4100XPC DC electric rope shovel that had been in operation for approximately two years. To date there had been little work done on evaluating the operation of the 4100DC electric rope shovel, and no work had been done into investigating the intended operation of the 4100AC shovel. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of the 4100XPC AC and DC electric rope shovels on Hail Creek Mine’s distribution system through the use of the SKM PowerToolsTM modeling software. This paper outlines the modeling process used to simulate the operation of both electric rope shovels as well as the standards that were used to determine if the shovels’ impact on the distribution system was within acceptable limits. Load flow, fault, protection co-ordination, harmonic and arc flash studies were conducted and it was found that the existing DC shovel connection arrangement and proposed AC shovel arrangement did not have a negative impact on the mine site’s distribution network.