I’m delighted to announce that the first edition hardcover hard copies of my kids book Amy’s Balancing Act are now in stock!
You can get signed copies from my online shop and regular copies from all good bookshops (if they don’t yet have them on bookshelves they can order them through the distributor Woodslane).
To read more about the book please see this page.
It was an honour to attend the PM’s Prizes for Science, particularly with the inaugural PM Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems.
A few lines from Anthony Albanese really stood out to me:
“the work that you do lasts through generations.”
“Over the span of thousands of generations, First Nations’ Australians have cultivated a unique connection to this land.
To its ecosystems, its skies and its waterways.
An intimate wisdom, passed on through deep time.
Through this connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have created their own detailed knowledge of meteorology, astronomy, horticulture, biology.
For the longest time, much of this knowledge went unseen and unconsidered by mainstream science.
Yet, just as embracing the world’s oldest continuous culture has enriched our understanding of our history.
Understanding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander science allows us to see things we might otherwise have missed.
Shedding new light on problems, making fresh connections across disciplines and deepening our collective knowledge of our home continent, and the world around us.
This is surely what lies at the heart of science.”
It was refreshing to present at some conferences IRL recently (SoERC and Cigre). My slides – on the ANU research on accommodating electrification demand growth into the side capacity of the distribution network – are now on the Australian Policy Online (this is a great initiative and treasure trove – check it out!). https://apo.org.au/node/331066
This podcast discussion is another good summary of the take home messages:
as is their write up:
Good CER policy depends on good (transparent, open source) analysis, which depends on good (open source) data. Here is data set of 100 Canberra properties, including their power demand, solar generation and battery operation. This has been foundational to much of the analysis I conducted at ANU, and I hope make others will find many other uses for it.
I’ve chosen to finish up at The Australian National University this week. Some, incomplete, reflections on the six years there:
“it is vital that before we build more network, we use more network” – AER Chair, Clare Savage
Electrification and population growth will both drive significant increases in electricity demand over the coming decades. This study investigates how the effect of this growth on zone substations could be mitigated by scheduling water heating and electric vehicle charging to occur during solar hours and overnight.
Taking the ACT as a case study, we find that the complete electrification of water heating and private vehicles, together with population growth would drive a large increase in total demand. By 2045 – when the ACT Government plans to get off gas – the increase is on the order of 75% for high growth regions such as Gungahlin. 30% is due to population growth and 45% from vehicle electrification. The electrification of water heating is compensated for by the efficiency of heat pump hot water systems, which we assume make up 75% of heaters in 2045.
We find that the super simple approach of scheduling water heating and vehicle charging loads to occur at fixed hours each day throughout a year effectively avoids these appliances contributing to peak demand on zone substations. Modeled zone substation demand continues to peak on winter evenings due to other loads (significantly space heating in the cold Canberra climate), which we model to be inflexible.
It concludes that simple strategic policies that shift loads into low demand periods would enable significant growth in total demand to be accommodated within existing zone substation capacity limits. For example, in the suburb of Gungahlin, such measures could limit peak demand increases to just 25%, while all private vehicles and domestic hot water are electrified, and the population grows by 30%.
For the avoidance of doubt, the study does not purport to predict how demand growth and demand scheduling will develop, but to provide quantified, plausible scenarios of how they could develop to motivate and guide policy and public initiatives.
Noting that zone substations are only one link in the electricity grid, three goals stand out:
Conference presentation and full report below
Continue readingA paper published in npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport analysing the vehicle-to-grid response to a major grid disturbance in the Australian grid.
Vehicle-to-grid technology enables electric vehicles to contribute their large, high-power batteries to power systems reserves. Here we report the first demonstration of a fleet of vehicles discharging to support system security after a frequency contingency in a national grid. Our results highlight the potential of vehicle-to-grid, with vehicles discharging within 6 s of the contingency event, and shortcomings, with vehicles recommencing charging before the power system had fully recovered.
Full paper below
Continue reading
Intuitively it makes sense that microgrids are a good idea. There are many of us that want that to be the case and for good reason. They have the potential to bolster local resilience, increase utilisation of renewable energy sources and give a sense of autonomy back to communities.
One of BSGIP’s most substantial pieces of research is drawing to a close. The Southcoast microgrid Reliability Feasibility (SµRF) project is a $3.1 m transdisciplinary project that explores the challenges and benefits of microgrids within an Australian context. Set within the New South Wales south coast shire of Eurobodalla, a region devastated by the 2019-2020 Black Summer, the project took a deep dive into this technology and how it could be integrated into today’s complex and multifaceted energy system.
This article focuses on two recently published reports; a technical report that lays out a number of scenarios using real-world data applied to selected sites, and a social science report examining governance, social and regulatory issues under the current system.
Continue readingIMHO, the energy system has 2 goals:
• Efficiency – minimizing total economic & ecological costs
• Equity – human wellbeing, individually and collectively
The (Nobel prize earning) Tinbergen rule stipulates that each of these goals requires its own policy instrument. Relying on 1 market price – to efficiently manage EV charging without inequitable punishing parents for cooking at 6pm – flies in the face of this.
So, what can be done? Late last year I had the privilege to speak my mind about this problem and potential solutions (spoiler: separating energy demand into an essential and a flexible component – which could just be EVs to start with) as part of a Victorian Council of Social Service event and in a presentation to the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) economic research team.
The first preso was recorded
Slides and here
And context of the VCOSS project is https://vcoss.org.au/projects/2024/01/energy-health-nexus/
I had the pleasure of discussing all things energy transition with the ACT Chief Minister late last year in my role as ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year.
His description below… https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewbarrmla_dr-bjorn-sturmberg-has-been-awarded-the-2024-activity-7274676995525894145-duD4
“Dr Bjorn Sturmberg has been awarded the 2024 ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year Award for his work on clean energy technology.
The Award recognises the achievements of an emerging scientist and celebrates excellence in scientific research and innovation here in the ACT.
Continue reading
RouteZero, our tool for simulating the energy consumption of electricbuses on any given bus route and the grid impacts of charging them at a bus depot has been published in a Nature Portfolio special issue https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00008-2.epdf
The tool is now also availble opensource in its entirity https://github.com/bsgip/RouteZero/
While the easy to use web version remains freely available https://routezero.cecs.anu.edu.au/ has been extended to include Autearoa.
If you’d like to have further routes added to the web version please send me a message. All we need is the gtfs files (which are ubiquotously available).
Hats off once more to Johannes Hendriks for doing the heavy lifting in creating this fantastic tool!