Post Category → Electricity

Applying responsible algorithm design to neighbourhood-scale batteries in Australia

Our new paper in Nature Energy asks fundamental questions of what values and biases algorithms are encoding into our digital energy system.

Abstract below:
The digital energy era presents at least three systemic concerns to the design and operation of algorithms: bias of considerations towards the easily quantifiable; inhibition of explainability; and undermining of trust and inclusion, as well as energy users’ autonomy and control. Here we examine these tensions through an interdisciplinary study that reveals the diversity of possible algorithms and their accompanying material effects, focused on neighbourhood-scale batteries (NSBs) in Australia. We conducted qualitative research with energy sector professionals and citizens to understand the range of perceived benefits and risks of NSBs and the algorithms that drive their behaviour. Issues raised by stakeholders were integrated into NSB optimization algorithms whose effects on NSB owners and customers were quantified through techno-economic modelling. Our results show the allocation of benefits and risks vary considerably between different algorithm designs. This indicates a need to improve energy algorithm governance, enabling accountability and responsiveness across the design and use of algorithms so that the digitization of energy technology does not lead to adverse public outcomes.

Full text available here https://rdcu.be/cpu0G

DERlab launch

After more than two years of research, design and construction our DERlab is ready for public launch!

The launch on the 13th of July will feature the Chief Minister of the ACT, Andrew Barr, and Vice-Chancellor of the ANU, Brian Schmidt.

More details and registration for the launch here.

Check your mirrors: 3 things rooftop solar can teach us about Australia’s electric car rollout

“The electric vehicle transition is about more than just doing away with vehicles powered by fossil fuels. We must also ensure quality technology and infrastructure, anticipate the future and avoid unwanted outcomes, such as entrenching disadvantage.

Australia’s world-leading rollout of rooftop solar power systems offers a guide to help navigate the transition. We’ve identified three key lessons on what’s gone well, and in hindsight, what could have been done differently.”

Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/check-your-mirrors-3-things-rooftop-solar-can-teach-us-about-australias-electric-car-rollout-162085

Microgrids: how to keep the power on when disaster hits

It’s timely to consider how we can build a better system – one that’s more resilient in times of disaster and also doesn’t contribute, through carbon emissions, to making disasters more frequent.

One part of the solution is more connectedness, so one transmission line being severed is not the crisis it is now.

But just as important is ensuring connectedness isn’t crucial.

This means moving away from centralised systems – powered by a few big generators – to decentralised ones, with many local and small-scale generators. Instead of one big grid, we need many microgrids, interconnected but able to operate independently when necessary.

Full Piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/microgrids-how-to-keep-the-power-on-when-disaster-hits-130534

Get in on the ground floor: how apartments can join the solar boom

While there are now more solar panels in Australia than people, the many Australians who live in apartments have largely been locked out of this solar revolution by a minefield of red tape and potentially uninformed strata committees.

In the face of these challenges, Stucco, a small co-operative housing block in Sydney, embarked on a mission to take back the power. Hopefully their experiences can serve as a guide to how other apartment-dwellers can more readily go solar.

Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/get-in-on-the-ground-floor-how-apartments-can-join-the-solar-boom-79172

Owners of electric vehicles to be paid to plug into the grid to help avoid blackouts

Electric vehicles can help keep the air clean in our cities – as we’ve seen recently with the reduction of traffic through COVID-19 lockdowns – but they face two obstacles.

In the short term they’re still expensive. In the long term charging millions of vehicles from the electricity grid presents challenges.

I’m part of a new project, launched today, that tackles both of these obstacles head-on, and it could mean owners earn more money than they’re likely to pay for charging their electric vehicles.

Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/owners-of-electric-vehicles-to-be-paid-to-plug-into-the-grid-to-help-avoid-blackouts-132519

SolarQuotes assessment of SunTenants

Here’s what the very popular website SolarQuotes had to say about SunTenants

Almost one-third of Australians live in rental properties.  This is a problem because tenants don’t like paying their own money to put solar panels on their landlord’s roof and few landlords see solar power as a good investment.  Because of this, lots of the population are missing out on the savings solar slathers all over electricity bills.  It also prevents the world benefiting from the extra clean energy that would be generated.

SunTenants is a company working to resolve this problem and get more solar panels on rental roofs.  They do this by solving the coordination problem between renters and landlords.  SunTenants can fix this problem — for a price.  But if the alternative is no solar gets installed then I think it is a price worth paying.

Read their joke filled write up here.

“Everyone’s a winner”: PICA Group secures Australian-first strata solar electricity deal

“I see this as everyone is a winner. The proposition for tenants is they don’t have to change anything that they are doing, they are just now having their electricity bills reduced and they also get to feel better by having that cheaper power also be cleaner power,” Dr Sturmberg said. 

“For generators, power purchase agreements (PPA) have been really quite an important way to de-risk their investments in their developments. 

“What is happening in that PPA is you’re locking in the rates all the consumers will be paying for that power – that means as a generator you have certainty.” 

Dr Sturmberg, who is also the founder of social enterprise SunTenants, says to date these types of energy deals have largely been driven by governments, despite demand from renters and smaller entities. 

“It is a really great way for consumers of electricity to have a more direct relationship or direct buying power towards renewables rather than just buying from the national electricity market,” he said. 

“PPAs have started to become more accessible to smaller entities and currently the ACT government has been extremely successful with its power purchase agreement. It’s made the Territory powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity and has in the process saved Canberra millions of dollars.”

Full article in The Fifth Estate here https://thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/everyones-a-winner-pica-group-secures-australian-first-strata-solar-electricity-deal/

ACT’s big battery pledge is a step forward

This week, ACT Labor proposed a network of large batteries in the territory that will have a total capacity of 250 megawatts. That’s two-thirds larger than the world’s current largest battery, which is in South Australia, and may well be amongst the top 50 by the time it’s completed.

While little is known yet about the plans beyond the headline, the capacity and the budget spend ($100 million over five years), the general concept is commendable.

The ability to store electricity, such as in batteries, is increasingly critical for us to continue the transition to a zero-emissions future. By supporting battery storage, an investment like this will continue the territory’s international leadership on clean energy, following in the footsteps of the very successful and influential wind and solar reverse auctions.

The proposal is to distribute the batteries across the ACT. This is an excellent move, because it will showcase the versatility of batteries to provide services in a diversity of settings.

Full OpEd in The Canberra Times https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6951076/acts-big-battery-pledge-is-a-step-forward/