Thanks for popping by my website. I don’t have a neat description for what I do, but this site will hopefully capture some of my activities as they occur.
A short bio is below:
Dr Bjorn Sturmberg is a Senior Research Fellow in the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at The Australian National University where he works on research, development, demonstration, and commercialisation of low carbon electricity and transport systems.
Dr Sturmberg’s background includes a PhD in theoretical physics; an Innovation Fellowship from the Myer Foundation; implementing Australia’s first solar + storage apartment microgrid; and leading a startup that makes solar work for rental properties from inception to acquisition.
And here’s some text from my 2024 ACT Scientist of the Year application:
Throughout my career in academia and industry the purpose of my research and innovation has been to accelerate the transition to clean energy and to steer this transition towards fairer and more equitable outcomes.
My PhD research worked on improving the efficiency, and thereby cost competitiveness, of solar photovoltaics using nanoscale physics. During my PhD and I led the first retrofit of an Australian apartment complex into a solar and battery powered microgrid. This opened my eyes to the socio-economic barriers to decarbonisation and their impacts on social equity. This motivated me to start a company that made solar possible for rental properties, which I led until its acquisition.
Since then I’ve been at ANU working on how to best integrate zero emissions technologies, including solar, batteries, and electric vehicles, with the power grid and people’s lives.
This integration is paramount because while switching to these electric appliances eliminates emissions, it roughly doubles household electricity usage. Left uncoordinated, these appliances would overload the grid or require extensive grid upgrades that would cost billions of dollars and decades.
My aim is to have immediate, real-world impacts. I therefore embrace multidisciplinary approaches and collaborations that synthesise technical, social and economic perspectives and methods to form a holistic view of the issues facing people and the power grid. Partnering with industry and policy stakeholders in project design and delivery also ensures that the most pertinent issues are prioritised and that research outputs can be readily and widely received.
Specific project aims include:
- Harnessing the batteries in electric vehicles – which could grow to be five times larger than the capacity of the Snowy 2.0 hydropower station, to provide backup power support to the power grid. This provides huge financial and environmental savings.
- Reducing the upgrades to the ACT electricity network required in order for the territory to completely transition off gas by 2045.
- Assisting bus operators and transport planners assess the feasibility of electrifying their bus routes and depots. This is supported by our freely available machine learning software for predicting electric bus energy consumption based on local conditions and optimising fleet charging.
- Identifying regulatory and policy innovations required to support the resilience of regional communities using microgrids.
- Uncovering policy levers for incentivising landlords to install solar on rental properties.
- Promoting researchers and developers of energy technologies to reflect on the ethical and fairness impacts of their algorithms.
And my email is bjorn [dot] sturmberg [at] anu.edu.au