Australia’s energy market operator is worried about the grid’s reliability. But should it be?

By Dylan McConnell, UNSW Sydney The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) this week released an update to its annual assessment of reliability, the so-called Electricity Statement of Opportunities. This has been reported as the market operator forecasting “power shortages”, or the network being “at risk of supply shortages”. The market operator has certainly put up…

An Australian-made quantum chip in every home? (podcast)

This week Quantum Brilliance announced a $26 million funding round, a significant boost to its lofty ambitions. Brent Balinski spoke to co-founder Dr Andrew Horsley about bringing Australian-made room-temperature quantum accelerators to the masses. Among people who care about such things, Intel’s examination of Australia as a possible home for a fabrication site in the…

The A$30 billion Sun Cable crash is a setback but doesn’t spell the end of Australia’s renewable energy export dreams

By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University Sun Cable – considered to be the world’s biggest renewable energy export project – announced last week it had entered voluntary administration following “the absence of alignment” with shareholders. Sun Cable is expected to cost over A$30 billion. It proposes to build an enormous, 12,000 hectare solar farm in the…

To clean up Australia’s power grid, we’re going to need many thousands more skilled workers – and fast

By Jay Rutovitz, University of Technology Sydney; Chris Briggs, University of Technology Sydney, and Rusty Langdon, University of Technology Sydney To get Australia’s grid 82% powered by renewables by 2030 is a huge increase. At present, the electricity powering eastern and southern states is around 33% renewable. To get there means a lot of work.…

Australia’s place in the semiconductor world – Software may be eating the world, but software is nothing without semiconductors

Due to an unexpected number of high-quality contributions, @AuManufacturing’s Australia’s place in the semiconductor world editorial series has been extended again. Here Mike Nicholls writes that Australia has the opportunity to build a thriving semiconductor industry without investing $20 billion to build a fab. But we do need to get started.  It’s hard to imagine,…

Australia’s place in the semiconductor world: The opportunities for Australia in the semiconductor industry

As our Australia’s place in the semiconductor world editorial series draws to a close, Steven Duvall and Glenn Downey provide the final part of their four-part feature. Here they propose steps to help build the semiconductor industry in Australia 1) Introduction This article concludes our four-part feature on semiconductors, continuing the themes from the three…