UQ Solar
The challenge of sustainable, clean energy

A revolutionary initiative changing the renewable landscape of Australia through knowledge and innovative research.

Beginning as a collaborative project between UQ’s Property and Facilities Division and four schools from the three faculties in 2010, UQ Solar researchers get benefit from 70MW of solar installations across Queensland and 2.9 MWh battery storage that established UQ as the first major energy-neutral university in the world. By putting solar energy and its management at its centre of activities, UQ Solar is conducting a number of Government and industry-funded innovative projects related to:-

• Solar PV impact on the distribution network
• Large-scale solar PV impact on transmission and sub-transmission networks
• Condition monitoring of solar farms
• Real-time digital simulation using RTDS and Opal-RT
• Energy management and microgrid
• E-mobility

Through industry engagement and ARENA funding, several successful UQ Solar projects are being trialled across Queensland to provide services to the Australian energy sector. For example, The Increasing Visibility of Distribution Networks project developed a system that provides distribution network service providers (DNSP) with increased visibility of their medium voltage networks. The outcomes of this project are continuing to support DNSPs to take a less conservative approach in assessing and approving new customer solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to be connected to their networks. Another UQ Solar project Solar F2D2 aims to trial a new, advanced solar farm diagnostics and reliability enhancement tool – Solar Farm Fault Detection and Diagnosis (Solar F2D2). A number of research fellows funded by ARC DECRA and Advance Queensland have been supported by UQ Solar facilities. UQ Solar researchers are currently working on two Advance Queensland Projects: one addressing energy sector challenges including data aggregation and analytics in the field of power and energy system using 20,000 behind the meter smart meters and the other one is addressing the challenges of 50% renewable energy integration to the Queensland grid by 2030.

UQ Solar has long-term collaborations with Energy Queensland, GridQube, Powerlink, AEMO and with various universities and research labs in Australia and abroad including MIT, Princeton, University of California Riverside, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, SIEMENS, IBM Australia, CSIRO Data61, UTS, Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne.