Energy Digital Mission
The energy market is experiencing disruptive change with the uptake of renewable energy and distributed (local) energy assets such as solar photovoltaics, batteries and electric vehicles. Australia is leading the world in this trillion-dollar energy network transformation. The Energy Networks Australia, CSIRO (through the Grids and Energy Efficiency Systems Program) has been instrumental in helping to envision the future of Australia’s national electricity system.
The Data Driven Energy Mission aims to explore the potential for larger bill savings, achieving national clean energy targets and fairer distribution of costs for consumers by developing technologies to enable this transformation to take place without compromising system availability and cost.
The Mission has tackled these problems through three key research areas unique to the digital domain which are complimentary to the Energy Networks Australia, CSIRO – Grids and Energy Efficiency Systems Program:
- Novel Sensing and Data Capture
- Information creation storage and access
- Modelling and Analysis
The objective of the Data Driven Energy Mission is to use emerging digital technology to enable greater efficiencies through a self managing, self-optimizing “internet of energy”. The Data Driven Energy Mission aimed to provide decision support and tools to deliver flexible energy resources that enable real-time balancing of supply and demand for electricity.
With collaborations spanning across CSIRO, universities, government and industry, the Data Driven Energy Mission delivered a complimentary digital and technology lens to existing research in the energy space. Key research outcomes include the development of models for forecasting aggregated photovoltaic production, tools for predicting photovoltaic adoption, tools for supporting local energy trading schemes, and a prototype building registry providing an interface for buildings and their energy use patterns to the smart grid.
Activities have commenced to identify future impact pathways for various projects including merging some of the work into a Cities Mission exploring use cases and integrations for a Digital Twin.