Building the National Energy Analysis Centre

By  Claire Jordan-Peters 11 October 2024 3 min read

The National Energy Analysis Centre is a world first. It will combine a living lab of household energy users with national energy data and powerful system modelling tools, all in one platform. Over the last year, we have been grateful to receive support from the UK’s Energy Systems Catapult to help us understand how to set up our living lab component.

Our team have been picking the brains of the Energy Systems Catapult experts, finding out what they’ve learned from their own experiences of running a successful energy living lab in the UK.

Lessons from the living lab

In an energy living lab, participants can agree to share their real energy use data, such as meter data, heating and cooking appliance use, solar generation and electric vehicle charging. We can then use our grid-scale emulation and simulation capabilities to model household energy use behaviour at a state or national scale, or in modelling future scenarios.

The UK has done this with their Whole Energy System Accelerator and we are looking to create a similar capability using our technologies at our Energy Centre in Newcastle. Living lab participants also share their opinions and experiences via surveys, and can opt in to test new energy products and services.

Some of the valuable lessons from Energy Systems Catapult’s living lab include:

• A living lab research facility with thousands of participating homes can have a self-sustaining business model to cover its costs, whilst delivering on public research outcomes that accelerate Australia's energy transformation.
• Participant experience is paramount in a living lab of this style, as their engagement is vital to maintain the diversity needed for trials.

• Recruitment drives are needed to progressively build up the living lab participant pool membership and diversity. This is because we want to run research trials that are able to select the right sample of participants, technology and geographies.
• Most participants won't be involved in or eligible for research trials most of the time, so we need sufficient 'out of trial' activities to keep them engaged. Running surveys, for example, can keep participants involved and contributing, and provide interesting longitudinal insights about the participants’ energy habits and attitudes.
• Research trial incentives offered by the living lab are nice but not the primary motivator for many long-term participants. Their motivations for joining and staying with the living lab are often altruistic. This is where people want to contribute to the energy transformation in a more meaningful way. Another motivation may be a desire to better understand their own energy transformation journeys such as home renovation effects.

What's next for the Australian energy system

We are now developing the foundations of the NEAC to test the recruitment processes, and safe data collection systems. We will also demonstrate new ways that the Australian energy system can be modelled and visualised across energy types, not limited to just electricity and gas.

In 2025 we will start recruiting our first living lab participants in a pilot process.

Teamwork makes the dream work

The NEAC will be useful for many different organisations including policy makers, planners, consumer groups, innovators and industry. We would like to thank the following organisations for their letters of support:

• Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC)
• Australian Energy Regulator (AER)
• Energy Consumers Australia (ECA)
• Australian Pipelines and Gas Association (APGA)
• EnergyLab
• Energy Systems Catapult UK
• RACE for 2030 CRC
• The Energy Charter
• Engineers Australia
• Ausgrid
• RealTechX
• Solar Victoria
• Committee for the Hunter
• Energy Networks Australia
• Pearcey Foundation
• Climateworks Centre
• First Nations Clean Energy Network