The University of Western Australia is offering more courses than ever before. Join us and Seek Wisdom.
The University of Western Australia is offering more courses than ever before. Join us and Seek Wisdom.
The University of Western Australia is offering more courses than ever before. Join us and Seek Wisdom.
The University of Western Australia is offering more courses than ever before. Join us and Seek Wisdom.
The University of Western Australia is offering more courses than ever before. Join us and Seek Wisdom.
University of Western Australia
By Carrie Cox
Universities have a critical role to play in shaping the transformation of the State’s energy sector.
The race to prepare electricity grids for the evolving energy sources that will power them has placed engineering schools in one of the most dynamic periods in modern history.
“It’s a really exciting time,” says Professor Tyrone Fernando, a lead academic within UWA’s Renewable Energy and Microgrids research cluster, “and an absolutely critical one. These things have to be done right. They have to be evidence-based. There are real problems to be solved and this is a time when universities can really make a difference.”
Working at the coalface, so to speak, of Western Australia’s move toward a decarbonised energy sector, UWA researchers and students are teaming up with industry to trial technologies and kickstart new initiatives. Projects include power generation forecasts of renewable energy sources, the designing of microgrids for remote areas, and determining the impact of electric vehicle take-up on power supply.
Staff and postgraduate students of the Power and Clean Energy research group.
“It’s the sort of work you can’t just do in a laboratory and then present it a few years later,” Professor Fernando says. “You’ve got to be working closely with industry all the time so that innovation can translate.”
Professor Fernando says the unique challenges produced by WA’s vast size and topography could also see us become a renewable energy leader globally, particularly in the area of microgrids. These standalone islands of power, usually disconnected from the main grid and potentially fuelled entirely by renewable energy, are capable of delivering a reliable, storable supply to remote communities. Western Power currently operates four of them — in Kalbarri, Perenjori, Bremer Bay and Ravensthorpe — but Professor Fernando says there is scope for many more.
“It’s the sort of work you can’t just do in a laboratory and then present it a few years later. You’ve got to be working closely with industry all the time so that innovation can translate.”
“I think WA could become the microgrid capital of the world,” he says. “Some of these might be connected to the main grid, some completely disconnected, while others might form part of a microgrid network. The key objectives in each case need to be reliability of supply, cost-effectiveness and no damage to the environment.”
He says as the appetite for renewable energy grows, as reflected in the accelerated take-up of solar energy by households (one in three WA households now has rooftop solar), the need to manage distribution networks becomes increasingly important.
“If we want more and more people to take up renewable energy and you still want to maintain the integrity of the whole grid, then that balance between supply and demand, the variability between load and generation, all of that needs to be well managed in a cost-effective way,” Professor Fernando says.
Power and Clean Energy research group at work in the laboratory.
To that end, UWA is working with Western Power and other partners on ‘Project Symphony’ — the pilot creation of a ‘virtual power plant’ to harmoniously manage the energy created by solar panels, in-home batteries and electric vehicles rooftop solar in the Southern River region. The University is also working with local engineering companies to design and install grid-interfacing power electronics for energy storage systems and microgrids, including the Cheratta Microgrid Project in the State’s north.
Professor Fernando says his team is also working with the Intergovernmental Organisation on an innovative mine electrification project that involved building a ‘digital twin’ site to enable companies to simulate, track and optimise the performance of their infrastructure. “This project will help our largest miners de-risk the transformation of their mine sites to cleaner technologies.”
Read the full issue of the Summer 2023 edition of Uniview [Accessible PDF 15Mb].
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