Facilities

Visit the UQ Solar website to learn more.

Visit the renewable energy laboratory page on the UQ Solar website to learn more. 

Visit the Australasian Transformer Innovation Centre website to learn more. 

Visit the Industry 4.0 Energy TestLab website to learn more. 

The Centre for Energy Data Innovation (CEDI) is a research enterprise created in partnership between The University of Queensland and Luceo (a Redback Technologies Company) and launched with funding from Advance Queensland. The centre is industry driven, addressing energy sector challenges using network big data to conduct analytics in the field of power and energy systems.

Key areas of focus include network management and network intelligence using big data and visualisation of large energy data sets for network operators and consumers.

The Centre research demonstrates the Schools commitment to multi-disciplinary research collaboration, incorporating researchers in data science, electrical engineering and interaction design. This work will contribute to the creation of data led solutions that enable an effective transition to the grid of the future.

The Centre is working closely with Luceo, Energy Queensland and Springfield City Group.

More than 20,000 data sensors, installed on the Energy Queensland Low Voltage network provide near-real time feedback from a wide range of network feeder architectures, feeder demand profiles and consumer types.

Almost 30 million data sets are received into the Luceo cloud-based data platform daily, providing our researchers with abundant information to drive our research.

Postdocs and HDR students from data science, electrical engineering and interaction design work with the software engineers at Luceo and network engineers at Energy Queensland to unlock new insights from neighbourhood grids.

Network management

Utilising data to improve the efficiency of asset management will speed up response times to outages and unsafe network conditions as well as improve power quality and reliability.

Network intelligence

Improving understanding of low voltage networks will assist in optimising network planning, maintenance and replacement programs.

Network visualisation

Assist network professionals to utilise big data as they transition to the future grid and work with consumers to provide them with better representations of their energy environment.

Due to the global demand for energy saving and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, utilisation of renewable energy sources and efficient loads based on power electronics technology is increased in electricity networks. The negative aspects of this technology are very complex and not well known which affects the reliability and robustness of the grids.

Our research team have access to advanced tools and lab facilities for a better understanding of power quality issues of the residential, commercial and industrial distribution networks.

We have been investigating and developing novel techniques to improve power quality and reliability of the grids, harmonics emission and immunity levels. In our advanced lab, we are able to perform power quality and grid robustness modelling, analysis and tests covering harmonics and supra harmonics (0-170 kHz) for distribution systems and microgrids with high penetration of power electronics converters.

We also investigate the energy efficiency of grids and grid-connected equipment with respect to international and national regulations and standardisations.

Our research group have access to state of the art power quality equipment, power electronics design platforms with Wide Band Gap converters, Multi-physics simulation platform and a micro-grid simulator.

A well-equipped insulation diagnostics laboratory, which is very actively used for insulation degradation and over-stress measurements. This lab includes a lightning impulse voltage generator, single and multiple impulse current generators, 300kV AC transformer system, Recovery Voltage and Polarisation / Depolarisation current measurement system, frequency domain dielectric spectroscopy equipment with HV variable frequency power supply, Partial Discharge Measurement System, thermal imaging camera and Frequency Response Analyser.

Intelligent Plant Diagnostic laboratory has a special accelerated ageing experimental facility at Long Pocket. This laboratory is suitable for long term ageing experiments under controlled moisture and temperature for transformers and other insulation materials.

UQ has developed the Machines Laboratory as an online laboratory – in which real laboratory experiments can be accessed through the Internet using the MIT’s iLab environment.

This laboratory has a number of conventional laboratory experiments (Transformer & AC circuits) and a number of online machines experiments (AC, DC and Synchronous machines) using iLabs, which can be shared across university or across the world.

The iLabs vision is to share expensive equipment and educational materials associated with lab experiments as broadly as possible within higher education and beyond. This is the only online machines laboratory in the country and is jointly funded by the Australian Power Institute and The University of Queensland.

Power electronics refers to control and conversion of electrical power - from milliwatts to hundreds of megawatts - using semiconductor power devices operating based on Pulse Width Modulation strategy.

Our research team have access to high-end pulsed power technology with adjustable high voltage nanosecond pulsed power generators with different energy capacities, WBG Power Converters for grid-connected inverters including dSPACE controller and high-frequency pulsed generators for ultrasound systems.

The power system simulation facilities has analytical software tools to simulate, plan, design and control complex interconnected power systems with state of the art solutions.

The analytical tools available can solve power system problems in wide range of time frames, from micro seconds to steady state and study impact of renewable energy integration, Custom Power devices, etc. Some of the software tools available are listed below.

• PSS/E
• DSAT tools
• PowerWorld
• DigSilent Power Factory
• PSCAD/EMTDC
• PSS SINCAL

Apart from the above tools, the powerful sever located at the PEC has a number of test power systems, both at transmission and distribution level typically used for research in Power, Energy and Control Engineering Systems.