I’m very honoured to be named as the ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year today. I thought I’d share the 60 second video I made for the application.
Post Category → Electricity
Watt equity? Australians deserve a Basic Energy Right
This essay was first published in Australian Quarterly 95.3, Australia’s Longest running public affairs magazine, published by Australian Institute for Policy and Science https://aips.net.au/aq-magazine/current-edition/
Within the energy industry there is a popular, feel-good refrain that the energy transition will deliver a system that is ‘democratised’, in addition to being ‘decarbonised’, ‘digitised’, and ‘decentralised’. Here democratised is used as an umbrella term for a broad suite of desirable values: fair, just, equitable. Yet the way in which democratisation is envisioned to occur is, in contrast, blinkered – households are seen to gain political power as a consequence of their generating and controlling electrical power from rooftop solar, batteries, and electric vehicles – but what about those without?
This prevailing narrative of democratisation overlooks, amongst other things, the connection between privilege and ownership of these technologies, and the structural realities of social, as well as techno-economic, power. In particular, it ignores the systemic effects of managing energy through markets and, consequently, ignoring energy’s role as an essential service underpinning modern life.
The starting point of this essay is that the energy transition is not on track to improve equity. This is because equity will only be improved if it is prioritised above competing values, such as profit, in the millions of design choices that constitute the transition.
Such prioritisation is impossible within the existing (artificially) constrained policy landscape, in which the only options are those within the framework of indistinguishable individuals interacting through a market. This eliminates any space for unequal redistribution in recognition of the differing circumstances within the collective, and thereby contributions towards equity.
Progress towards equity rests on expanding the policy imagination. This essay offers one such suggestion: the establishment of a Basic Energy Right that provides all households with a modest amount of energy free of charge to meet their essential needs.
Continue readingBean nuclei
There once was a bean farmer called P. For years, he’d supplied his local shops and cafes with tasty black beans. But then along came a new farmer whose green beans were much cheaper, and what’s more didn’t make people fart.
Everyone in town was excited to switch to these new cheap fart-free green beans. Farmer P was facing ruin.
So P decided to remind everyone that there was also a third type of bean that they should consider. This is an exotic purple bean that no local had ever tried.
Now P knew that these pink beans were expensive, hard to grow, and were suspected of making people’s hair fall out. No customers was going to choose the pink beans over the cheap, clean green beans.
But by making his customers spend time researching these pink beans P hoped to sell them another season or two of his old familiar black beans.
—
Inspired by question from students at Cringila Public School as part of a DeadlyScience session | Image from deepai.org
Ignore variability, overestimate hydrogen production – Quantifying the effects of electrolyzer efficiency curves on hydrogen production from renewable energy sources
In this new paper with Dan Virah-Sawmy and Fiona J Beck we show that neglecting the variable electrolyzer efficiency, as is commonly done in studies of green hydrogen, leads to significant overestimation of hydrogen production in the range of 5–24%
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319924020676
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of including (or neglecting) the variable efficiency of hydrogen electrolyzers as a function of operating power in the modelling of green hydrogen produced from variable renewable energy sources. Results show that neglecting the variable electrolyzer efficiency, as is commonly done in studies of green hydrogen, leads to significant overestimation of hydrogen production in the range of 5–24%. The effects of the time resolution used in models are also investigated, as well as the impact of including the option for the electrolyzer to switch to stand-by mode instead of powering down and electrolyzer ramp rate constraints. Results indicate that these have a minor effect on overall hydrogen production, with the use of hour resolution data leading to overestimation in the range of 0.2–2%, relative to using 5-min data. This study used data from three solar farms and three wind in Australia, from which it is observed that wind farms produced 55% more hydrogen than the solar farms. The results in this study highlight the critical importance of including the variable efficiency of electrolyzers in the modelling of green hydrogen production. As this industry scales, continuing to neglect this effect would lead to the overestimation of hydrogen production by tens of megatonnes.
SwitchedOn podcast on Energy Equity
Delighted to be on RenewEconomy & Boundless Earth SwitchedOn podcast kicking off a discussion of how to *truly* improve energy equity https://reneweconomy.com.au/switchedon-podcast-free-electricity-to-cover-essential-needs/
“A popular refrain of the renewable energy transition is it will deliver an energy system that is more democratic, as well as decarbonised. That the political power of generating energy will shift from big power companies to households, as a result of us being able to generate and control electrical power from our rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles, etc.
But this decentralised, democratic narrative isn’t a foregone conclusion…”
Interview on ABC’s Our World Today
An interesting conversation about the ever growing amount of rooftop solar and the journey of EVs.
Participation and sensemaking in electric vehicle field trials: A study of fleet vehicle-to-grid in Australia
We have just published a new article from the REVS V2G trial about how participants in a field trial – in this case, the fleet, sustainability and asset managers – make sense of and influence technologies when a group comes along wanting to deploy and test them.
We found unexpected effects which revealed insights about what configuration of V2G might be acceptable to fleet end users. If energy market participants want V2G to solve their problems (and make them profit), they need to do the flexibility work.
Abstract
Vehicle-to-grid is a niche technology that has the potential to benefit electricity markets and support more renewable energy in the grid. However, interest from prospective users in adopting V2G is not well understood, particularly in the context of fleet vehicles. Technology-oriented field trials can contribute to the development of niche technologies. Trials usually focus on making engineered systems work, institutional embedding and testing business models. However, through the participation of users they also provide the opportunity to explore processes of problem definition and the formation of social, ethical and cultural meanings. This article presents findings from the Realising Electric Vehicle-to-grid Services project, an Australian trial of vehicle-to-grid in a government-owned light passenger car fleet, aiming to explore co-productive processes as essential aspects of participatory technology development. Our data comprises interviews with organisational actors responsible for facilitating and mediating the trial, as well as others in similar organisational roles. Adopting ecologies of participation as a framework, it reveals the productive effects of these actors in mediating the local embedding of vehicle-to-grid. These findings challenge the framing of vehicle-to-grid as being a question of consumer acceptance and suggest that, for this promising technology to contribute to a more sustainable future, the electricity sector must accept more risk.
Full article: https://lnkd.in/eukchts2
Strata solar in Qld
Story in SBS about how an Australian physicist found a way to shave 10% off his neighbours’ power bills.
Arkadiy Matsekh changed the billing system of the embedded network of his housing complex. As a result, his neighbours are saving up to 10 per cent on their power bills.
Dr Sturmberg believes that the greatest achievement of this particular body corporate is that the community was able to reach an agreement and embrace change.
“Dr Matsekh seems to have done a lot of work by actually talking to his neighbours and getting their support,” he says.
“The bigger impact of what he has done is not kilowatt-hours of solar that he has produced. But the social expectations that he is setting in his neighbourhood.
Continue readingThe message to the broader society says that ‘everyone deserves access to cheap and clean power’.
Video insight into the EnergiZine experiences
This has been one of the most engaging – and out there – projects I’ve ever had been involved in. It was an absolute privelidge to work with Brad Riley and collaborators in the First Nations Clean Energy Network on the content, Mitchell Whitelaw and Dave Fanner from the Engaged ANU on the creative engagement, and Tristan Schultz from Relative Creative who designed the richly layered absurdist mnemonic experience.
The created Zines can be viewed here.
My speech from the events:
Engaged ANU event at Questacon
Immerse yourself in an absurd wellness ritual, and design your renewable energy future in the style of a wellness EnergiZine.
In this immersive journey, we embrace the strange obsession of modern culture with wellness and extend its fascination to our energy choices. Like a vibrant metabolic soup, energy systems and sub-systems interplay, offering trade-offs and options for just transitions. Through cutting, pasting, hacking, crafting, mapping, and layering, you will design your renewable energy futures in the style of a wellness EnergiZine, tailored for your own home, workplace, and community memory places. Nourishing the soul, you’ll explore renewable energy sources that nurture our planet and promote our wellbeing.
Drawing on the intelligence of Indigenous knowledge systems, you’ll develop mnemonic techniques to store your energy knowledge for later use. Guest speakers, including First Nations experts and ANU researchers, share perspectives that enrich your EnergiZine.
Join us in this remarkable experience where wellness and energy transitions intertwine. Let the workshop’s immersive atmosphere fuel your creativity and inspire conscious choices. Don’t be left in the dark. As the sun dips below the horizon, let your EnergiZine shine, illuminating a path to a sustainable energy future for ourselves and the planet we call home.