ESKIES - Energy Resilience in Extreme Weather Events

Energy Sustainability through Knowledge and Information Exchange and Sharing (ESKIES) aims to explore the options for enhancing the resilience of households and communities during weather-related power outages, and to share the learnings with communities affected, or likely to be affected in the future, as well as with policymakers and other stakeholders.

Werombi Bushfire

Image Source: Helitak430 (Creative Commons) -https://bit.ly/3uFmLfH

Study Overview

In recent years, devastating bushfires and other extreme weather events have seen communities across New South Wales (NSW) lose access to power from the electricity grid. Many have drawn on a variety of backup resources and approaches to cope during these outages, but others have not been equipped to manage the extent of the outages and their far-reaching implications for access to telecommunications, water, transport, and other services. With new technologies being developed in the transition to renewable energy that enable households and communities to generate, store and use energy locally, there is an opportunity to ensure that people have alternative means of accessing power for essential activities when the grid is affected. 

ESKIES aims to build energy resilience in vulnerable communities by developing an understanding of the role that solar, batteries and other renewable energy sources, as well as energy management approaches, can play in maintaining electricity supply to regional and rural communities during bushfires and other disruptions to the electricity grid.

Research Leads

Research Team

 

Project Partners

The ESKIES project was funded by the NSW Reconstruction Authority’s Bushfire Community Resilience and Recovery Fund (BCRRF) in the wake of the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020.

ESKIES is a project of the Collaboration on Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) at UNSW Sydney. The authors are grateful to the many organisations who supported the project, including (but not limited to) the Australian PV Institute, the NSW Office of Energy and Climate Change, Endeavour Energy and the Community Recovery Officers who helped us to connect with communities.

Most importantly, we would like to thank the many NSW residents and professionals who generously gave their time to participate in interviews and workshops and share their experiences, insights and expertise.

Find out more about energy resilience in bushfires and extreme weather events in Australia here!

 

Publications

Title & place of publication Author Research area Type Links Year
Energy Resilience in Bushfires and Extreme Weather Events Sophie Adams , Mike Roberts , Shanil Samarakoon , Ellie Kallmier, Michael Dillon, Alison Potter, Rachel Szczepaniak, Rob Passey , Anna Bruce , Declan Kuch , Dr Iain MacGill, Renate Egan Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation, Sustainability & general Reports and Working Papers 2023
Renewable backup power key to energy resilience in disasters Ben Knight Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation Media 2023