Tag Archives: electricity

Would electric cars crash the grid?

Widespread adoption of electric cars in New South Wales would increase demand on the power grid by an average of eight per cent, according to new research from the School of Engineering.

Sohaib Rafique and Professor Graham Town used data from the New South Wales Household Travel Survey to determine the demand that electric cars would place on the grid if they were used in 82 per cent of weekday and 81 per cent of weekend commutes, with trips less than 35km in length. Continue reading Would electric cars crash the grid?

Affordable, sustainable energy for all: the Australia-Indonesia Energy Cluster

Access to affordable, reliable energy transforms communities. For most Australian and Indonesian families and businesses, that energy still comes from national grids—the networks of power lines that connect users to power suppliers.

But about 67 million Indonesians—almost a third of the country’s population—are not on the grid. They either rely on expensive, non renewable sources of power—often diesel—or they have no access to power at all. That poses a critical challenge for sustainable development of Indonesia—a nation of islands. To meet the Government’s goal of 90 per cent electricity coverage by 2020 the country’s electricity generation must grow by nine per cent per year.

Continue reading Affordable, sustainable energy for all: the Australia-Indonesia Energy Cluster

An end to Indonesia’s hospital power blackouts? Sensing reductions in energy use

A team from Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and the Australian National University (ANU) are planning to use thousands of sensors to monitor heat, noise, human activity and power usage in commercial buildings in Yogyakarta. This data will help them design a real-time monitoring system that saves energy and can be used in commercial buildings across Indonesia.

Energy demand in Indonesia has grown by 150 per cent over the last 30 years. Electricity supply is struggling to keep up—blackouts are common in hospitals, hotels, offices, shopping centres and university laboratories.

Continue reading An end to Indonesia’s hospital power blackouts? Sensing reductions in energy use