Workshop on Managing system security and reliability with increased renewable generation

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Terijo Lovasz

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Biographies

Andrew Blakers

Andrew Blakers (FAA FTSE) is Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University. In the 1980s and 1990s he co-produced silicon solar cells with world record efficiencies. He was joint winner of the top global engineering Queen Elizabeth Prize in 2023 for PERC solar cell technology. PERC comprises half of all solar panels ever made, and has cumulative panel sales of US$150 billion, and is mitigating 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions through displacement of coal. Prof Blakers engages in analysis of energy systems with 80-100% penetration by wind and solar photovoltaics supported by storage for which he was joint winner of the 2018 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research. He and his team developed a global atlas of a million off-river pumped hydro energy storage sites which is highly influential in the renewable energy storage industry, with projects stemming from the atlas worth tens of billions of dollars. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

Aedan Whyatt

Aedan Whyatt is the Head of the Southeast Asia Development Policy and Programs Branch in the Office of Southeast Asia (OSA) in DFAT. Aedan has served overseas as Counsellor (Poverty and Social Development) at Australia’s Embassy in Indonesia and First Secretary (Health) at Australia’s High Commission in Papua New Guinea.

In Canberra, Aedan has led the Global Programs and Partnerships Branch, the Education and Social Protection Branch, the Development Policy Section, the Pacific Labour Mobility Section and the PNG Human Development Section. He has served in economic and social policy roles in Pacific and Southeast Asia taskforces to bolster Australia’s engagement in the region.

Aedan has represented Australia in the Board of Directors in the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and DFAT in the Council for International Education.

Alex Ward

Alex Ward is an Electrical Engineer with a broad technical background, having worked in several technical and project management teams since joining SAPN in 2011. Alex has played a key technical and management role in the delivery of complex projects, including SAPN’s advanced feeder automation system. Recent experience includes major customer and technical interaction in the delivery and commissioning of large embedded generation connections.

Currently he is overseeing the delivery of SAPN’s future network’s strategy, in the role of Program Manager.

Awais Ahmad

Awais Ahmad, an associate research fellow at UNSW, is working in collaboration with the University of Wollongong (UoW), the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) under Theme 9 of the Australian Global Power System Transformation (GPST) consortium on DER and stability for power systems with large penetrations of DER, Duties include developing and defining test procedures for DPV, BESS and HESS based on the Australian renewable energy integration standards AS4777. Testing off-the-shelf PV inverters under grid disturbances and characterising their behaviour.

Aside from technical duties, Awais has generated comprehensive reports, made meaningful contributions to publications, and maintained the project's online presence with regular website updates.

Bridget McIntosh

Bridget McIntosh has lived and worked on the energy transition in Australia and Southeast Asia for 25 years. She is currently the Chief Research Consultant at CSIRO Energy and also Chair and Founder of EnergyLab Cambodia. In Southeast Asia she worked for the World Bank, Cambodian Climate Change Office of Ministry of Environment, and as Managing Director Carbon Bridge Pte Ltd. In Australia she has worked for Philanthropic Trust, Sustainable Energy Development Authority of NSW, Origin Energy, Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water and engineering consulting firm GHD.

Babak Badrzadeh

Babak has more than 20 years of multi-sector subject matter expertise including positions at Etik Energy, AEMO, Vestas, Aurecon, and Mott MacDonald. He has provided consultancy services to many national and international organisations ranging from system operators, network owners, plant owners and developers, policy makers, original equipment manufacturers, and research institutions. He is currently the Managing Director at Etik Energy. He is highly active in CIGRE and IEEE activities including as a lead author of the recently published CIGRE Green Book on Power System Dynamic Modelling and Analysis in Evolving Networks.

Behrooz Bahrani

Prof. Behrooz Bahrani began his education at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, securing his B.Sc. degree, and subsequently earned his M.Sc. from the University of Toronto, Canada. He achieved his Ph.D. in 2012 from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, with a concentration in electrical power engineering. After postdoctoral stints at institutions like EPFL, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Technical University of Munich, he joined Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in 2015. He now serves as an Associate Professor and Director of the Grid Innovation Hub there. Prof. Bahrani specializes in inverter-dominated power systems, with a recent focus on grid forming inverters and their role in integrating renewable energy into the grid.

Chen Liu

Chen Liu is a research fellow at RMIT University since December 2020.

He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) from RMIT in March 2021.



 

Chris Davies

Chris Davies is Group Manager of Future Energy Systems at the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO). The core function of his department is to establish and implement a strategy for the engineering and operational readiness that will prepare Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) for future operational conditions, including 100% instantaneous levels of renewable generation.

Chris has overseen a progressive body of work to prepare for a high renewable power system, during his seven years with AEMO, including the Future Power System Security Program, AEMO’s Renewable Integration Study (RIS), the NEM Engineering Framework, and most recently the Engineering Roadmap to 100% Renewables.

David Scott

David Scott has been a Manager (NEM Wholesale Reform) at Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) since January 2020. Prior to that, he was with CS Energy for 13 years.

David is based in Brisbane.

Dom van den Berg

Dom van den Berg is the Chief Executive Officer of Energy Networks Australia (ENA). Dom grew up in South Africa and after living and working in the UK, Kazakhstan and Singapore now considers Australia home. Dom and her partner Michele have two young children and live on the Mornington Peninsula. Dom brings to the role an international career spanning more than twenty years in the energy sector – from leading BG Group’s operations in South and East Asia, to Shell’s energy transition team in Australia to AGL’s decentralised energy team.
 

Elena Kranz

Elena Emilia Kranz, based in Marrickville, NSW, is currently a Data Scientist - Power System Applications at Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Elena Kranz brings experience from previous roles at Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), 50Hertz Transmission GmbH, Stromnetz Berlin GmbH and Siemens.

Elena holds a 2021 - 2023 Master's degree in Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen - Informations- und Kommunikationssysteme from Technische Universität Berlin.
 

Eli Pack

Eli Pack is the Group Manager System Planning at Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The System Planning department is responsible for strategic power system planning to support the investment and operation of Australia's electricity markets and infrastructure as the economy transitions to net zero emissions by 2050. The department conceptualises and assesses long-term infrastructure projects, and conducts detailed reviews of power system security, operability and reliability. This professional engineering and economic analysis can trigger major and minor infrastructure investments, and supports industry and government in their operation. This is a critical function in AEMO’s overall System Design division, effectively defining the National Electricity Market (NEM) and gas market development needs and opportunities.

Eli has been with AEMO for over 15 years.

Frederik Geth

Frederik Geth is a Principal Power System Engineer working for GridQube. He is a researcher passionate about power systems, with long-standing research interests in helping distribution grids deal with low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles and battery storage, through physics-based optimisation models.

Fred believes improving distribution network operations and planning is a crucial step in effectively decarbonising the energy system, and that network data cleaning, state estimation, and system identification engines are critical enabling technologies. He has consistently demonstrated that the better these engines exploit the physics – the more useful, explainable, reliable, and scalable they are – and wants to continue proving this in the real world with the talented team at GridQube.

Helen Wu

Dr Helen Wu is a statistician specialised in data analysing, time series modelling and forecasting. She joined CSIRO as a postdoctoral research fellow working on every aspect of data analytics, data visualization, optimization, and predictive modelling.

Helen received her Ph.D. degree in Science from University of Sydney, Master of science and Bachelor of Science from National University of Singapore.
 

James Foster

James Foster is a member of the Energy Economic Modelling team, within the Energy Systems research program at CSIRO. He is a specialist in mathematical optimisation and data analytics applied to energy systems.

The Energy Economic Modelling team performs research on the production, transport and consumption of energy on national or global scales. Together we provide insights from our modelling to help industry and government make strategic decisions to adapt to the present and future state of the global economy.
 

Jenny Hayward

Jenny Hayward is a principal research scientist in CSIRO Energy. She leads research projects on technology cost projections and the models she has developed are used to project the cost of electricity generation, energy storage and hydrogen production technologies for AEMO and the Australian Government. Jenny has made economic modelling contributions to roadmap and renewable energy projects, including the Federal government’s 2020 Low Emissions Technology Statement, the CSIRO National Hydrogen Roadmap and the Low Emissions Technology Roadmap. She has contributed to studies undertaken by CSIRO on different parts of the hydrogen value chain, transport, biofuels, energy storage, remote area power systems and all types of electricity generation and fuel conversion technologies. Dr Hayward’s focus is on developing new methods and modelling approaches to provide robust projections of the capital costs of existing and emerging electricity generation and fuel conversion technologies. Jenny has a PhD from the University of Sydney in computational chemistry.

Jessica Guth

Jessica Guth is a Systems Engineer with a double major in Renewable Energy Systems, and Mechanical and Material Systems at GHD. She has experience working in the public and private sector in project management, data analysis, reporting, and contract management.

Jessica has been with GHD since February 2023.

 

John Ward

Dr John K Ward is the Research Director of the Energy Systems Research Program at the CSIRO and is responsible for driving the program’s science direction and ensuring the program is developing a suite of science capability to meet future industry needs. His research is particularly focused on adding intelligence to the interaction of energy systems within the electricity distribution network. Leading the Energy Systems (GEES) Research Program, John is delivering of a research portfolio, with over 50 staff over multiple sites, tackling Australia’s national energy challenges – including through fundamental research into building thermal physics, behavioural science, electricity network optimization, solar forecasting and energy storage.

Julio Brazlavsky

Dr Julio H. Braslavsky is a principal research scientist specialised in mathematical modelling, analysis and control of power and energy systems.

Julio leads CSIRO research projects and collaborative partnerships with government agencies and national and global research and industry organisations to identify and solve these technical challenges, supporting policy and regulation that enable an efficient transition to safer, secure, and reliable decarbonised electric power systems.
 

Ken Baldwin

Professor Ken Baldwin was the inaugural Director of the Australian National University’s (ANU) Energy Change Institute, now part of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions. He was also the founding Director of the ANU Grand Challenge: Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific.

The main focus of his work is to help drive the energy transition, particularly for Australia’s export future based on renewable energy.
 

Luke Robinson

Luke Robinson from Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is on placement as the Executive Director at Global Power System Transformation Consortium. A Chartered electrical engineer and MBA graduate with extensive experience in the power engineering sector in both consulting and utility environments. Demonstrated capability to drive continuous improvement and efficiency initiatives, provide technical leadership to teams of professional engineers, and deliver positive outcomes through a commitment to innovation and quality service.
 

Mahathir Almashor

Dr Mahathir Amashor is a Senior Engineer at CSIRO. He has contributed to and led a variety of research projects within academia and industry that have transformed scientific outputs into real-world products. Whilst primarily an engineer, he has maintained a publication track record through the years, which includes contributions to 5 patents. He has also contributed expert reviews to various scientific conferences and journals. Since joining CSIRO Energy, he has focused on applying AI and deep-learning techniques within Energy research.
 

Mark Paterson

Mark Paterson is the Principal and Lead Systems Architect of Energy Catalyst, a specialist consulting practice focused on the targeted structural shifts required for legacy power systems to be capable of supporting a secure and cost-efficient Net Zero Emissions future.

With over two decades in the energy sector, Mark's theoretically robust but pragmatic approach is grounded in his applied technology origins and Engineering, Business and Master of Enterprise qualifications. Working at the intersection of strategic vision and real-world application, he has led several national energy system transformation projects in Australia, including as Chair of the CSIRO Future Grid Forum and Program Director of the CSIRO/ENA Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap. At Horizon Power and Energex, two energy utilities serving remote, regional and metropolitan customers, he led the innovative development and scale deployment of several utility technology innovation firsts. Over almost a decade, Mark has been privileged to develop expertise in Power Systems Architecture disciplines now increasingly recognised as critical to enable the deep decarbonisation of legacy electric systems. Internationally, Mark is a Fellow of the Pacific Energy Institute and an invited Associate of the US Department of Energy’s GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC). He is also a contributing author for the IEEE Power & Energy and an invited expert contributor to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grid resilience activities.

Pierluigi Mancarella

Dr Pierluigi Mancarella is the Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at the University of Manchester, UK. His key research interests include techno-economic modelling and analysis of multi-energy systems, grid integration of renewables and distributed energy resources, energy infrastructure planning under uncertainty, and security, reliability, and resilience of low-carbon networks.

Pierluigi is the Energy Systems Program Leader at the Melbourne Energy Institute, a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), an IEEE Power and Energy Society Distinguished Lecturer, the Convenor of the CIGRE (International Council of Large Electric Systems) C6/C2.34 Working Group on “Flexibility Provision from Distributed Energy Resources”, holds the 2017 veski innovation fellowship for his work on urban-scale virtual power plants, and is a recipient of the international Newton Prize 2018 for his work on power system resilience in Chile. He is author of several books and over 300 research papers and reports, and is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and the Oxford Open Energy journal.

Pierluigi is the Australian principal investigator of the US-UK-Australia Global Center in Climate Change and Clean Energy “EPICS” (“Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society”). In the past few years, he has supported the Finkel Review panel, the Australian Energy Market Operator, the Australian Energy Market Commission, and the Australian Energy Regulator on relevant research and consultancy projects on power system security, reliability, and resilience, and has led and been involved in several projects via the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Cooperative Research Centres, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Rahmat Heidarihaei

Dr Rahmat Heidarihaei is a Senior Power System Research Scientist with CSIRO. He is an experienced power systems researcher with the focus on DER integration, constrained network optimisation, inverter controls and benchmarking. Competent in modelling and tool development in a scientific collaborative context.


 

Sarah Goodwin

Dr Sarah Goodwin is a Senior Lecturer within Monash's Embodied Visualisation research group. She is passionate about helping to harness data more effectively for a sustainable future. Using human-centric approaches her research seeks to create visual solutions to enable the exploration and communication of complex, multi-dimensional and geospatial data sets.

 

Sorrell Grogan

Sorrell Grogan is a co-founder and consulting engineer at Etik Energy, Australia. Having previously worked at independent system operators, network service providers and equipment manufacturers, his focus is delivering models, analyses, tools, and solutions to practical problems for the transmission and distribution sectors looking to accommodate inverter-based resources in evolving systems. He specialises in the creation of EMT plant and network models for connection studies and system restart analysis.

Syazwani Aman

Syazwani Aman is a Senior Manager at Single Buyer, Malaysia.

Thomas Brinsmead

Dr Thomas S Brinsmead (PhD ElecEng) leads the Power Systems team in the CSIRO Energy Business Unit. He has previously been part of the Energy Economics team in the same organisation. He applies quantitative analysis methods to understand the role of energy in the Australian economy to assist governments and industry decision making. Previous research includes developing a systems and risk management framework for conceptualising and applying sustainability principles, least-cost electricity generation planning, and Australian greenhouse gas emissions reductions pathways. He has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Automatic Control, both from the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia.

Thomas Wearne

Thomas Wearne is a power system/renewable energy engineer at CSIRO, with extensive practical experience in the design and delivery of solar systems in grid-tied and off grid scenarios. He has also worked for a power utility in connections and system control/market operator. In this role he delivered an ARENA project focused on increasing renewable penetration through the design of BTM PV control solutions which are also relevant for EV integration. Thomas is currently involved in several projects concerned with the development of Australian Standards for DER control and cybersecurity and is seeking to become involved with decarbonisation projects concerning integration of inverter-based resources.

Veronica Ayu Pangestika

Veronica Ayu Pangestika is an Associate Research Analyst with Sustainable and Renewable Energy (SRE) Department at the ASEAN Centre for Energy.

Veronica has a BA in International Relations from Universitas Gadjah Mada and is an expert in energy geopolitics, energy transition, energy diplomacy.

 

Zahrah Zafirah

Zahrah Zafirah is an Associate Research Analyst with Sustainable and Renewable Energy (SRE) Department at the ASEAN Centre for Energy.

Zahrah has a B.Eng, Industrial Engineering from University of Indonesia and is an expert in energy modeling & simulation, renewable energy (bioenergy), and policy analysis.