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UNSW Sydney has partnered with Providence Asset Group and Tamworth City Council to develop a trial of what it claims will be Australia’s first fully integrated smart city, with applications spanning transport, energy, health, telecommunications and other community services.
UNSW contrasts this with previous trials that it says have incorporated only energy systems and were based on older technology on individual user cases instead of an integrated approach.
Providence Asset Group describes itself as “an innovation driven investment and asset management firm for sophisticated, wholesale and institutional investors in renewable energy, venture capital, and eco-friendly real estate.
The project will be led by professor Joe Dong, director of the UNSW Digital Futures Grid Institute. He said the aim for the project was to build the IT systems that would monitor and control data flowing from a range of devices using Tamworth’s existing wireless network.
UNSW said use of existing IoT infrastructure enabled seamless integration of IoT devices, from home appliances and utility monitors to council services such as waste management, lighting and parking, and asset security, to health services like remote patient monitoring.
Dong said: “Imagine having an app on your computer or phone that gives you your electricity usage and cost information in real time, and also tells you how some slight change of usage pattern of appliances such as the washing machine could most effectively save electricity bills.
“You could have other apps on the smart network for a variety of purposes – such as wearable health monitors that alert your medical practitioners should you need to go and see them or live transport and traffic monitoring to give you alternative routes as soon as a hazard occurs.”
Hybrid hydrogen/battery energy system
UNSW is also collaborating with Providence Asset Group to develop what it says will be Australia’s first large-scale hybrid energy storage system, using lithium batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.
It will be installed at a $200m solar farm to be built by Providence and Risen Energy Group in south-east Queensland to store surplus electricity generated by the solar farm and discharge it when required.
Dong said his team together with researchers from UTS was working on a system that would use artificial intelligence to manage and smooth out the intermittency of renewable energy, balance out supply and demand, and allow the storage and use of excess renewable energy where and when needed.
