Energy security and resilience

• Smart grids, microgrids
• Impact of distributed generation
• System management, process monitoring and predictive maintenance
• Data modelling; networks and generation
• Energy Resilience within infrastructure
• Renewable energy integration

The Electric Power Optimization Centre (EPOC) has been instrumental in the development of policy for the electricity industry in New Zealand through advice to the Electricity Commission, Electricity Authority and the Climate Change Commission. EPOC has written a number of submissions to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, and the Electricity Authority on different aspects of regulation of the NZEM.

Over the past ten years, much of the software developed in EPOC has been migrated to the programming language Julia and made open source. EPOC has applied SDDP.jl to New Zealand hydroelectric reservoir optimization, through the software package JADE.jl. JADE was adopted in 2022 by the New Zealand Electricity Authority as a tool to monitor market performance and assess New Zealand’s security of energy supply.

EPOC was founded in 2002 when it held its first Winter Workshop at the University of Auckland. This meeting is now an annual gathering of modelling experts in the New Zealand electricity industry, to disseminate academic research and share modelling approaches to electricity markets. Talks from the last eleven workshops are available on the EPOC website.

Resilience of infrastructure networks following natural hazard events: Novel system-of-systems framework

This project developed a novel system-of-systems framework of the complex temporal functionality of distributed infrastructure networks and the dependencies between networks.

A functional model was developed to represent New Zealand infrastructure networks and the interaction between networks. The model uses geospatial packages and network specific simulation packages, with real world data from a range of stakeholder organisations. This real-world basis, and the New Zealand wide model across all networks makes it fairly unique in the broader context of international research in this area, where simplified networks are often used due to a lack of data.

Towards a digital twin for decarbonisation and energy flexibility at meso and macro-scales

To address climate change, the industrial sector must transition to more sustainable practices, including decarbonisation of process heat. A potential solution is adopting a mix of energy sources, with the integration of renewable energy generation and energy storage technologies. This shift in the status quo gives rise to complex systems. Informed decision making is required about the appropriate energy mix, especially given the investment required and resilience of the energy system. The effective management and optimisation of flexible processing, energy generation and storage systems are also necessary, both for operational efficiency and sustainability impacts.

In the Industrial Information and Control Centre, we use digital twins, virtual simulations of real-world scenarios to evaluate energy flexibility options and mitigate potential investment risks in renewable energy and storage. Our models enable us to represent the technical complexities and investment costs associated with new assets and retrofit options, to provide effective planning for greener engineering practices. These models can be further developed into more comprehensive digital twins to aid in decision support during site operations. For example, our modelling can demonstrate the effects of updating existing plants with more energy-efficient and sustainable technology, such as using biomass and direct electrification for industrial needs.