/new : How we are building a National Energy Analysis Centre from the ground up

Presentation at the /NEW conference for technology professionals.

How we are building a National Energy Analysis Centre from the ground up

Australia’s energy system is undergoing rapid changes with the introduction of large-scale renewables and storage, coal-fired power stations closing, growing penetrations of rooftop solar, electric vehicles (EVs) and household and community batteries and more. We currently lack the tools we need to find the smoothest, most sustainable and most equitable path to transition.

Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO has an ambitious plan to build the National Energy Analysis Centre (NEAC) to accelerate and de-risk the energy transformation with a focus on equity, economic opportunity and innovation.

NEAC will include a powerful analytics platform, coupled with a Living Lab of thousands of homes. It will enable:

• researchers to gain actionable insights from energy use and behavioural data at any scale.
• innovators test prototype energy devices, apps etc.

Building the architecture for this online platform requires the selection and integration of dozens of static and dynamic datasets, including smart meter data, sensor data and human response data from thousands of real homes. We are taking a human-centred design approach and also focusing on data security and privacy.

Dr Stephen Craig, NEAC Director, will outline the need and uses for NEAC, then Tony Wybrow, NEAC Solution Architect, will discuss the technical challenges for the Living Lab, design process and progress toward go-live.