The Connectivity Innovation Network started off 2023 hitting the ground running, hosting the Power Resilience Symposium last week on 31st January at UTS. The symposium was an opportunity for major players in the power resilience space to come together and workshop the greatest challenges facing stakeholders working to improve connectivity in NSW. 

Representatives from energy providers such as Endeavour Energy and Ausgrid, as well as Telco providers such as Telstra, Optus and BAI Communications spoke on their major hurdles when seeking to provide ubiquitous connectivity, particularly in times of emergency. First responders from NSW Fire and Rescue Services provided valuable context for prioritisation of services during disaster scenarios, and attendees explored the suitability of new sustainable power solutions thanks to speakers from Polarium AB, UTS, and University of Sydney. 

The three key focus areas for the CIN at the end of the symposium included: the creation of a data catalogue for the purposes of planning and developing business cases, sharing information between networks on outages, both planned and unplanned, and finally to understand ‘resilience’ on a per-site basis.

The recommendations from the symposium will go on to inform the CIN’s upcoming call for proposals. Thank you to all those who attended, in particular our speakers: Dr. Ian Oppermann (CIN), James Pickens and Dr. Haiming Wang (NSW Telco Authority), Anthony Baerwinkel (Endeavour Energy), Ben Lange and Adam Bradford (Ausgrid), Shane Fitzsimmons (NSW Telco Authority Board), Paul Barnes, Richard Gibb and Matthew Wormald (Fire and Rescue NSW), Patrick Maraun (BAI Communicaitons), Greg Dendle (Telstra), David Haigh (Optus), David Cooke (Polarium AB), Prof. Dylan Lu and Dr. Jahangir Hossain (UTS), and Prof. Jianguo Zhu (USyd).