Category: QSI Article

Budget confidence from the bottom up

A solid house is only as strong as its foundations, and a business and its budget is no different. With rising input costs, more competitive industry structures and lower pricing expectations, there is an ever-increasing emphasis on efficiency and productivity for energy and water businesses. It therefore isn’t surprising that a consistent theme emerging across the…


Evolving network pricing will help realise the economic and grid benefits of local trading markets

Here comes the sun Consumers are increasingly active in the Australian energy market. As has been extensively documented elsewhere, Australia has the highest proportion of ‘prosumers’ (energy-producing households) in the world, with more than 1.7 million domestic solar photovoltaic installations. There is now around 6GW of systems sized at 100kW and below[1]. By 2050, the…



Supporting a major energy service provider in accessing the ARENA / AEMO Demand Response Market

The challenge In June 2017, ARENA and AEMO launched a tender to secure a demand response market in South Australia and Victoria to secure approximately 100MW of response capacity by summer 2017/2018. ARENA specifically indicated that $22.5m of funding would be made available to institutions, businesses and/or aggregators who could propose more than 5MW of…



Water Utilities need a long-term energy strategy

Australia’s energy markets are delivering unprecedented electricity price increases and volatility. As significant electricity users, water utilities are clearly exposed to these forces. Balancing these risks is the opportunity to adopt alternative technology solutions and participate in existing and emergent markets. This Emerging Issue identifies the technology solutions and markets, shows how some water utilities…





Maintenance Services Resourcing Review and Civil Maintenance Benchmarking

A regional Australian water business has implemented a Productivity Improvement Strategy based on an in-house model which continues to be the preferred option for delivery of maintenance services. Whilst the business made it very clear that undertaking formal market testing of Civil and EMM maintenance services was highly unlikely in the short to medium term,…