Anna Bruce

• PhD
• Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney

Amid mounting stakeholder pressure to decarbonise electricity consumption, corporate renewable electricity (RE) procurement has played a significant role in driving investment in RE capacity in the Global North. In recent years, the emergence of 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) contracting, championed by the United Nations 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Comp...

Impact of solar powered refrigeration in a remote fishing community in Fiji.

Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) present significant challenges associated with energy poverty and lack of access to electricity, resulting in limited social mobility and economic development. While providing access to energy services, conventional fossil fuels are very costly and difficult to deliver to remote Pacific communities....

CSP research is focused on increasing the economic competitiveness of this technology as compared to conventional and emerging energy generators. Higher temperature operation conditions represent a pathway toward cost reductions since they enable a relatively smaller solar field area (typically ~40-50% of the plant cost) for the same electrical out...

This study aims to prepare the energy sector for uncertainty using a foresight tool known as weak signals. Weak signals (subtle signs of emerging issues with significant impact potential) are often overlooked during strategic planning due to their inherent predictive uncertainty. However, the value does not lie in precise forecasting but in broaden...

Energy resilience in bushfires and extreme weather events: Final report of the ESKIES project

Across several power systems with market frameworks, policy-makers are proposing that balancing flexibility requirements emerging during energy transition be addressed through new reserve product markets. However, these may introduce additional costs, constraints and complexity, and even encroach upon the functions of existing operational practices...

Australia’s electricity networks are experiencing low demand during the day due to excessive residential solar export and high demand during the evening on days of extreme temperature due to high air conditioning use. Pre-cooling and solar pre-cooling are demand-side management strategies with the potential to address both these issues. However, th...

Rapid decarbonisation of electricity production is required if Australia is to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement. Critical to achieving this at low cost while maintaining system reliability is the selection of an appropriate mix of generation technologies to service electrical demand. Australia has seen extensive deployment of renewabl...

There has been a boom in the sale of small-scale off-grid solar products across the Global South over the past decade. A substantial portion of this boom has been driven by international investment in off-grid solar start-up companies, and a formalized off-grid solar sector has been established, with the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association acting...

Purpose of Review To investigate the interaction between restructured electricity market designs, in particular Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), and variable renewable generators. In particular, to examine how the expansion of near-zero marginal cost, variable renewable generators may impact participant incentives and market power. R...

The significant growth in the number of distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems installed behind the customers' meter in the last decade has provided financial savings for customers and reduced the greenhouse gas emissions of the electricity sector. However, at high penetrations, PV electricity exported to the grid may result in reverse power flows t...

For restructured electricity industries undergoing energy transition, designing effective and efficient frequency control arrangements is a complex and ongoing task that requires appropriate configuration of controllers, generator technical connection requirements, market arrangements and wider policy settings. In this paper, we provide an overview...

It is widely acknowledged that climate change is occurring because of anthropogenic emissions. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, many countries are aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Reaching net zero emissions by 2050 will likely require a net zero electricity grid somewhat earlier than 2050 as other sectors of the economy w...

Executive Summary Australia's social and community housing could host as much as 1.8 Gigawatts (GW) of rooftop solar, allowing some of Australia's most vulnerable energy consumers to benefit from the low cost of solar. This is enough to: • provide more than 2,000 skilled jobs for 5 years • save 440,000 households an average of $750 every year for 2...

Battery electrified public transit (BEPT), including buses and passenger ferries, is a promising solution to transport-related climate emissions and urban air pollution, but introduces potentially challenging large, coincident demand in the low-voltage distribution network. This paper presents a tool for estimating the energy and charging demand of...

Australia has world leading uptake of distributed PV (D-PV) and increasing installations of battery energy storage systems (BESS). D-PV and BESS can provide various economic and environmental benefits to energy users, network companies and other industry stakeholders. However, integrating increasing levels of D-PV into electricity networks present...

Australia has world leading uptake of distributed PV (D-PV) and increasing installations of battery energy storage systems (BESS). Recent reports estimate one in four households own D-PV and installation rates are anticipated to grow in the years ahead. D-PV and BESS can provide various economic and environmental benefits to energy users, network c...

Pacific Island Countries and Territories have set ambitious targets for energy access and the transition to sustainable energy. These efforts, however, are being severely impacted by shocks and stresses such as climate change, natural hazards and the COVID-19 pandemic. Resilience is a central pillar for energy policy in the region, but innovative a...

Over the last decade, the electricity sector has seen a significant increase in the number of residential battery systems, as well as increasing interest in using them to reduce demand during network peaks. Although there is an abundance of literature assessing this ability using modelled residential batteries, there is a lack of detailed assessmen...

Appliance level control and automation is an increasingly promising demand-side management tool with growing installation of advanced metering, monitoring and control infrastructure in both residential and commercial contexts. Successful implementation of appliance control and automation can alleviate network peak demand and improve distributed pho...

The penetration of distributed battery energy storage systems in electricity grids globally is forecast to grow rapidly over the next 10 years. These systems can provide benefits for the customers that install them, but also introduce new opportunities and challenges for distribution network operators. This paper presents an algorithm that optimise...

Water heating is one of the most energy intensive applications in households and domestic electric water heating systems (DEWH) offer large thermal storage for moving electrical load across the day. This study uses a unique dataset from 410 households and presents a comprehensive analysis of electricity consumption and hot water draw of DEWH for th...

Wind and solar are increasingly cost-competitive as well as environmentally less harmful alternatives to the fossil-fuel generation that dominates most electricity industries. However, their highly variable and somewhat unpredictable output still requires high levels of dispatchable plants to ensure demand can be met at times of low renewables avai...

Research by UNSW and APVI shows there is a lead role for AFL, cricket and soccer clubs, associations and national governing organisations to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change in Australia. This document reports the findings on AFL.

Research by UNSW and APVI shows there is a lead role for AFL, cricket and soccer clubs, associations and national governing organisations to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change in Australia. This document reports the findings on Australian Cricket.

Research by UNSW and APVI shows there is a lead role for AFL, cricket and soccer clubs, associations and national governing organisations to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change in Australia. This document reports the findings on Australian Soccer.

This study analyses distributed photovoltaic (D-PV) system curtailment and impacts on consumers in response to high network voltages. Novel analytical techniques are applied to a unique real-world operational dataset of over 1,300 D-PV systems in South Australia to identify ‘tripping’. Data-driven methods are valuable due to the diverse range of D-...

The short-term characteristics of utility-scale PV variability become increasingly important for power system operation as PV penetrations grow. However, understanding how these characteristics and their aggregated impacts will change with new PV deployments is challenging given the limited and highly site dependent availability of high-resolution...

Electricity industries in emerging economies face particular challenges in delivering affordable, environmentally sustainable, and secure power given growing demand and limited financial resources. While supply reliability is often poor and emission reductions given lower priority, solar and wind are now amongst our cheapest supply options but high...

A key initiative in the Energy Security Board’s (ESB) post-2025 National Electricity Market (NEM) design work is how best to design system services arrangements (including frequency control, ramping and reserves and system strength services) to meet the technical needs of the power system during energy transition. As a part of this process, the ESB...

A key initiative in the Energy Security Board’s (ESB) post-2025 National Electricity Market design work is how best to design system services arrangements to meet the technical needs of the power system during the energy transition. As a part of this process, the ESB has used the electricity market rule change process to accelerate the design proce...

Understanding competition in electricity markets is fundamental to developing good regulatory, market design and associated policy frameworks for the electricity sector. Where and when competition is effective, appropriate market designs can be largely left to run; where it is not, interventions may be needed. Despite the need to monitor competitio...

Although the amount of solar photovoltaic systems installed in residential buildings is increasing globally, it is largely limited to single-occupancy dwellings and is extremely uneven across jurisdictions. Deployment on apartment buildings remains low, even in Australia with its world-leading residential photovoltaic penetration, or in countries s...

The growing deployment of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) in electricity industries raises many concerns for power system operation. Due to the highly variable and somewhat unpredictable characteristics of short-term PV output, the system operator faces challenges in balancing electricity supply and demand, which increases the need for short-term f...

The Energy Security Board (ESB) is currently investigating electricity market design transformation given the changing nature of energy services and users in a post-2025 National Electricity Market (NEM). In September, the ESB released a consultation paper asking for feedback on seven market design initiatives that were being considered. Our submi...

It's a sunny spring day in South Australia. A light breeze is cooling the coastal state capital of Adelaide as approximately 260,000 distributed solar photovoltaic systems (D-PVs) on residential and business rooftops generate electricity, setting a new State record for lowest minimum electrical demand for the third time this spring. All looks peace...

This technical brief provides an update on the nempy python package v1.0.0. It includes a summary of its features, accuracy, run-time, documentation, support plan and ongoing work.

The electricity sector has a key role to play in the sustainable energy transition. The falling costs of wind and solar PV have added to both the opportunities yet also challenges of balancing sometimes competing industry objectives of costs, security, and environmental impacts. This paper presents novel techniques for assessing possible future ind...

The Energy Security Board commissioned the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets at the University of New South Wales to undertake analysis of voltage on the LV networks within the NEM, as well as distributed PV’s influence on that voltage. This work used a unique dataset of maximum and minimum voltage measurements over 12,000 sites in the LV...

As distributed photovoltaics (PV) levels increase around the world, it is becoming apparent that the aggregate behavior of many small-scale PV systems during major power system disturbances may pose a significant system security threat if unmanaged. Alternatively, appropriate coordination of these systems might greatly assist in managing such distu...

Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) between end-users of electricity and renewable energy generators are of increasing significance in the Australian electricity sector. PPAs, depending on how they are structured, can allow end-users to achieve several objectives, including supporting renewable energy development, meeting corporate emissions reduction...

Electricity access is a key driver of socioeconomic development of a nation, and a critical catalyst to achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately Papua New Guinea (PNG) faces an acute electrification challenge with the majority of the population, especially in rural communities living without basic access to electricity. This...

Some two million distributed PV systems have been installed on rooftops across Australia over the past decade but there is surprisingly little data available about inverter market trends and therefore their potential behaviour and impact on the grid. This paper seeks to remedy this gap with regard to inverter specifications including rated AC power...

As subsidised feed-in-tariffs for distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation are reduced or abolished in many jurisdictions, there is growing interest in increasing self-consumption to realise greater value from rooftop PV generation. However, deployment of PV on apartment buildings lags behind other residential deployment despite the potential advan...

Demand Side Management (DSM¹) and in particular load shifting has considerable potential for facilitating renewables integration. At present, dispatchable loads in power systems are often operated to run late at night when electricity demand is lowest. However, they might also be managed to facilitate increasing levels of variable renewable generat...

This report estimates the total potential for rooftop solar in Austral;ia to be 179 gigawatts with an annual energy output of 245 terawatt-hours. It was produced in collaboration between the Australian PV Institute, the University of New South Wales and the Institute for Sustainable Futures. The analysis was undertaken by Jessie Copper, Mike Rober...

Australia has one of the highest penetrations of residential PV in the world and is projected to see substantially more deployment in coming years, with a growing proportion of this being coupled with battery energy storage (BES). Previous analysis of the implications of these residential distributed energy resources (DERs) has tended to focus on t...

Understanding of residential electricity demand has application in efficient building design, network planning and broader policy and regulation, as well as in planning the deployment of energy efficiency technologies and distributed energy resources with potential emissions reduction benefits and societal and household cost savings. Very few studi...

Distributed photovoltaics is playing a growing role in electricity industries around the world, while Battery Energy Storage Systems are falling in cost and starting to be deployed by energy consumers with photovoltaics. Apartment buildings offer an opportunity to apply central battery storage and shared solar generation to ag-gregated apartment an...

Distributed photovoltaics (PV) is playing a growing role in electricity industries around the world, while Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are falling in cost and starting to be deployed by energy consumers with PV. Apartment buildings offer an opportunity to apply central BESS and shared PV generation to aggregated apartment and common loads...

The authors are Australia-based energy researchers who view a close link between access to energy data and the country's transition to a sustainable and just community-based energy future, which they argue is currently hampered by some major incumbent energy sector businesses and politicians. Rooftop solar (PV) panels are popular additions to Aust...

Understanding of residential electricity demand has application in efficient building design, network planning and broader policy and regulation, as well as in planning the deployment of energy efficiency technologies and distributed energy resources with potential emissions reduction benefits as well societal and household cost savings. Very few s...

This paper reviews opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing photovoltaic (PV) deployment on apartment buildings, with a particular focus on the Australian experience. In 2015, residential loads account for 27% of global electricity use [1], while offsetting these loads with rooftop PV has been significant in developing a commercial global PV...

This paper reviews opportunities for, and barriers to, increasing photovoltaic (PV) deployment on apartment buildings, with a particular focus on the Australian experience. As rapid urbanisation drives increasing housing density, PV penetration in multi-occupancy housing has been limited by comparison with stand-alone housing in many jurisdictions,...

Microgrids for rural electrification, are expected to play a key role in achieving global energy access goals. However, the high cost of stand-alone microgrids intended to serve generally poor communities remains a key barrier to their deployment, while appropriate microgrid design and operation is a challenging task given the generally low diversi...

Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) is undergoing rapid transition in its generation mix. Importantly, large-scale synchronised generation is increasingly being replaced with variable renewable resources, such as wind and photovoltaics (PV). These technologies have rather different operational characteristics to conventional thermal and h...

Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) is undergoing rapid transition in its generation mix. Importantly, large-scale synchronised generation is increasingly being replaced with variable renewable resources, such as wind and photovoltaics (PV). These technologies have rather different operational characteristics to conventional thermal and h...

In Australia, a perfect storm of falling hardware costs and rising electricity prices have driven the rapid uptake of household photovoltaics (PV) over the last decade. As battery energy storage (BES) begins to follow the same declining price trends while retail electricity prices remain high, and much higher than feed-in-tariffs for exported resid...

The shift to low-emissions energy production has gained significant traction in Australia and around the world. Community Renewable Energy (CORE) projects are on the rise, reflecting the desire of communities to take control of their own energy goals, and embedded networks (ENs) are emerging as part of the CORE movement. An EN is operated by an EN...

Microgrids for rural electrification are expected to play a key role in achieving global energy access goals. However, the high cost of stand-alone microgrids intended to serve generally poor communities remains a key barrier to their deployment, while design and operation is challenging, given generally low diversity of loads and generators, and o...

Multiple solar irradiation maps are now available for Australia, with several maps and underlying spatial data publicly available through various web-based mapping platforms. This study aims to provide a cross comparison of the available annual global horizontal solar resource maps for Australia, highlighting regions where greater discrepancies bet...

Transport is responsible for over 17% of total Australian greenhouse emissions, the third largest sector for emissions behind electricity and direct combustion (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017). To meet our Paris Agreement commitments, the transport sector must start to decarbonise. Electromobility is one method to reduce carbon emissions and local...

The Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) is undergoing rapid change as utility-scale wind, solar and now battery storage technologies enter the market. The impact of these changes on the operation of the NEM is of interest to a potentially wide range of stakeholders including researchers, market participants, consultants and energy NGOs. De...

Deployment of rooftop photovoltaics (PV) is technically constrained by the availability of suitable roof space as well as by the ability of the distribution network to absorb exported generation. Although Australian rooftop PV installations are at record levels, deployment is uneven across different building types, with commercial, industrial and m...

Presentation of the findings from our Solar Apartments project to a stakeholder workshop organised by the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) at UNSW in December 2018. The project was funded by Energy Consumers Australia.

Despite potential advantages of load aggregation and scale discounts, few of Australia's 2.3 million apartment residents are amongst the country's 1.8 million solar prosumers. However, embedded networks can be used to distribute rooftop photovoltaic generation to households if split incentives and regulatory barriers are overcome. We present a mode...

Increasingly, there are calls for the owners of photovoltaic (PV) systems to pay additional charges on the basis that they are not contributing their fair share to network revenue. Air conditioners (A/Cs) are even more widespread than distributed PV systems, and their use has increased demand peaks and the size of networks required to meet them, th...

Key Findings Our analysis shows that Adelaide CBD could generate more than 25% of its electricity needs from its own rooftops, with the installation of 129 MW of solar on CBD rooftops. Using the average results from our 4 methods: • There is potential to install 129MW of solar photovoltaics on CBD rooftops • There is potential for 32 times the exis...

Deep Dive Workshop 1: Integrating Large Scale Distributed Solar PV Systems to the Grid 10 th April 2018, International Sustainable Energy Summit, Kuching Sarawak

Key Findings: The Australian PV Institute analysis shows that Melbourne LGA could generate more than 12% of its electricity needs from its own rooftops, with the installation of 461 MW of solar on its rooftops. Using the average results from our 4 methods: - There is potential to install 461MW of solar photovoltaics on City of Melbourne rooftops...

When a Renewable Energy (RE) power system is owned, operated or maintained by a community organisation, some of the problems associated with other rural electrification implementation models e.g. private or utility, can potentially be solved; including: lack of utility investment, barriers relating to social integration of RE technologies, lack of...

There is significant potential for rooftop solar PV in Australia. Rooftop solar PV is a key energy technology because it is leading the transition to consumer uptake of low-carbon demand-side energy technologies, which are providing new opportunities for consumer engagement and new clean energy business models to emerge. However, there is a lack of...