NEW

Background:

Melbourne Water (MW) is a statutory authority owned by the Victorian Government, managing and protecting the city’s major water resources for the community. Melbourne Water is responsible for reliable sewerage, healthy waterways, and drainage and flood management.

Melbourne Water’s activities include the following;

• manage water supply catchments, supplying affordable and high-quality water
• treat and supply drinking and recycled water
• remove and treat most of Melbourne’s sewage, ensuring that sewerage is reliable
• manage waterways and major drainage systems in the Port Phillip and Westernport region
• provide integrated drainage and flood management services
• help to create outstanding natural community spaces.

Objective

Melbourne Water would like to assess the performance of the AGL electricity contract over the first 10 year period, forecast energy pricing and emission offset performance over the next 5+5 years, and identify and explore energy procurement strategies/options at the conclusion of the contract in 2030.

Scope

The study will include assessment of:

• Historic and forecast energy load/demand profiles;
• Historic and forecast energy generation profiles (behind-the-meter use, export, etc.);
• Historic and forecast scope-2 greenhouse gas emission profiles;
• Historic and forecast energy market demand and pricing data (spot pricing on average, high power price events and triggers, negative power price events and triggers, export pricing on average, etc.);
• The monthly savings or costs incurred to date with the long term electricity contract (in comparison with the wholesale spot market), and, future anticipated savings/costs;
• Historic and forecast commodity prices (LGC, ACCU, etc.);
• Historic and forecast performance of contracted and alternative renewable instruments against corporate obligations;
• Potential energy procurement models of the future and the impact on energy, emissions and costs.

Deliverables

• Spreadsheet model outlining historic and forecast energy, emission and financial profiles, modelled analyses and respective option comparisons;
• A summary of input variables, assumptions and outputs (based on assumptions) and sensitivities to significant variables shall be produced;
• A survey of the industry and market including possible energy and renewable commodity procurement models (PPA, spot market, virtual net metering, etc.); and
• Views on price curves (wholesale spot market behind the meter, wholesale spot market in front of meter export, LGC, ACCU, etc.).

Background:

Melbourne Water (MW) is a statutory authority owned by the Victorian Government, managing and protecting the city’s major water resources for the community. Melbourne Water is responsible for reliable sewerage, healthy waterways, and drainage and flood management.

Melbourne Water’s activities include the following;

• manage water supply catchments, supplying affordable and high-quality water
• treat and supply drinking and recycled water
• remove and treat most of Melbourne’s sewage, ensuring that sewerage is reliable
• manage waterways and major drainage systems in the Port Phillip and Westernport region
• provide integrated drainage and flood management services
• help to create outstanding natural community spaces.

Objective

Melbourne Water would like to investigate the electricity demand management opportunities possible for the Western Treatment Plant (WTP) and western sewerage transfer network.

Scope

The study will include assessment of:

• Historic and forecast energy load/demand profiles;
• Historic demand management opportunities implemented, and, the savings, costs and learnings from these projects;
• Missed demand management opportunities (retrospectively), detailing the opportunity costs;
• The various demand management programs currently available (FCAS, RERT, contract load shedding, etc.) and the applicability of these programs for WTP and western sewerage transfer network in the future;
• Existing monitoring systems for separate load groups across the WTP and sewerage transfer system;
• Interoperability of transfer and treatment systems with respect to delivering identified demand management opportunities; and
• Future anticipated savings, costs and risks from the various demand management opportunities of the future (stand-alone opportunities and/or projects working in tandem).

Deliverables

• Report outlining demand management opportunities implemented to date, the various demand management programs currently available and assessment of opportunity feasibility;
• Spreadsheet model outlining historic and forecast energy profiles;
• Spreadsheet model outlining missed opportunities and future anticipated savings; and
• A summary of input variables, assumptions and outputs (based on assumptions) and sensitivities to significant variables shall be produced.

BACKGROUND:

Solar photovoltaic technologies have been identified as high potential solutions for water abstraction in relation to multi-purpose use. In Myanmar and across the Greater Mekong subregion, there is a demand by both the governmental and private sectors on how to guide investments of solar powered irrigation systems (SPIS) to areas and for modalities that are suitable, economically viable and sustainable.

IWMI is a non-profit scientific research organization focusing on the sustainable use of water and land resources in developing countries. IWMI would like to engage two or potentially more students in a set of feasibility studies on SPIS potential in Myanmar and Lao PDR.

As it is impossible to travel overseas at this moment, students will conduct the research from Australia. However, they will be assisted by IWMI’s local staff in collecting data and organizing project activities.

AIM:

In this project, students would undertake desktop research to evaluate available spatial data and solar irrigation needs in the country. They are expected to deliver the following outcomes:

* ideally, the theses would provide scope for one or more peer-review publications

WORK METHOD:

• Students enroll in a relevant course and will be supervised and assessed by an academic at RMIT.
• Students will work remotely to implement this project. IWMI staff will be remote co-supervisor during the project.
• Students will have remote check-ins with RMIT and IWMI co-supervisors on a bi-weekly basis.
• Data collection will be assisted by IWMI staff.

FUNDING:

The project is fully funded by the New Colombo Plan, which will cover all project-related costs.

Only Australian undergraduate students are eligible for this project.

APPLICATION PROCESS:

• Students submit EOI together with their latest CVs and academic records to Dr. Nina Nguyen at nina.nguyen@rmit.edu.au
• Students are selected subject to approval from IWMI.

Background

Rivalea (Australia) Pty Ltd is a leading Australian agri-business supplying approximately 20% of the domestic fresh pork market. The company is headquartered in Corowa NSW and has piggery operations at Corowa, Albury, Deniliquin, Bendigo and St Arnaud in western Victoria. Rivalea has stock feed mills and meat processing facilities in Corowa and Laverton Melbourne.

Rivalea’s operation are energy intensive both in the milling of feed, rearing of livestock and meat processing operations. The introduction of the Federal government carbon abatement programs and large increases in energy prices in recent years has incentivized the company to build out its own energy generation plant using on farm and plant resources.

The company has recognized for some time that biogas generated in the waste water treatment lagoons is a potential source of energy in the operations of the farm and processing facility.

In conjunction with various outside interests, the company has undertaken extensive research and feasibility studies for the capture and use of biogas over the last decade. For various reasons, many of these projects have not come to fruition however the large body of documentation and engineering work already undertaken provides a solid foundation for biogas energy use project design.

Rivalea has commenced the first stage of biogas recovery at Module 5 on the Corowa site. This stage included the construction of a 41ML effluent lagoon biogas collection cover and flare installed by September 2012. Gas collected from this system averages around 450m³/h with a methane content of 60-70%. Gas was flared for generation of carbon credits and data collection from 2012 with a 500-kVA generator installed in April 2017. A further 75ML lagoon and additional 1000 kVA of generator capacity has been approved for construction in 2018/19 at the Corowa site.

While the Corowa site is the largest resource and has the highest onsite energy demand behind the meter, the new project will largely exhaust any further opportunity at this site. The company has earmarked the Huntly piggery at Bendigo as having potential to recover biogas at the largest unit to offset energy costs and improve the environmental emissions from the site. This scope has been developed to investigate the feasibility of a project at Unit 6, Huntly piggery.

Scope of Works

The proposed Scope for a student project would encompass the following

• Familiarize with anaerobic digestion of waste water
• Characterize the waste water resource at the Huntly site
• Review available technologies i.e. covered ponds, tank digesters, etc.
• Develop models of performance of digesters
• Review electricity and gas use (Level 1 energy audit)
• Investigate biogas usage options onsite e.g., electricity generation, cogeneration (various technologies) or other options not previously considered.
• Recommend a biogas use strategy having regard to:
  • the highest and best value use of the resource both at present and regarding foreseeable future energy market trends;
  • Site layout and waste water flows, use of existing infrastructure and engineering limitations
  • funding grants and finance available for ‘low carbon’ projects;
  • opportunities to generate marketable credits for carbon offsets,
  • renewable energy credits or energy efficiency,
  • reduction of the sites overall carbon emissions
• Develop a business case including financial measures (payback, ROI, NPV)

Deliverables:

Final report detailing the business case

Presentation to Rivalea senior management

Resources:

Rivalea will provide  assistance to the student/s conducting the study.

1. Site visits to Corowa during the construction and commissioning of a covered lagoon and generator project.
2. Site visits to the Huntly piggery
3. Rivalea will cover the cost of any external laboratory results or transport of samples to RMIT labs.
4. Access to previous commercial feasibility studies conducted for the company
5. Mentoring and guidance to students
6. Introduction to industry practitioners where feasible.

BACKGROUND:

Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, Australia. It is run by the Melbourne City Council, one of 79 municipal authorities in Victoria operating as a public statutory body under the Local Government Act 1989. As a local government authority, the City of Melbourne (CoM) aims to achieve the community’s vision for Melbourne to be a bold, inspirational and sustainable city.

The City of Melbourne’s Climate Change Mitigation Strategy to 2050 (previously called Zero Net Emissions Strategy) guides our next steps in reducing the largest sources of emissions in our municipality – to achieve our science-based targets and to align our actions with the Paris Agreement on climate change. The four priorities for action in achieving our emissions reduction targets are:

• 100 per cent renewable energy,
• Zero emissions buildings and precincts,
• Zero emissions transport and;
• Reducing the impact of waste.

In line with achieving this ambition CoM has committed to purchase 100% renewable electricity for our own operations through the Melbourne Renewable Energy Project.  This commits us along with a buying group of fourteen organisations to purchase 88 GWh of electricity per year from the Crowlands Windfarm under a long-term power purchase agreement. This windfarm began supplying energy from 1 January 2019 and from this date the City ’s electrical load has been powered by renewable energy.

With emissions from electricity having been almost eliminated for the City’s operation, the next largest sources of emissions are from supply chain and natural gas consumption. The largest sources of natural gas within the city operational control are the recreation centres. These facilities contain swimming pools and therefore have significant heating loads. Currently natural gas is burned to provide this heating and these applications are generally considered difficult to transition away from Gas.

This project represents an ambition to demonstrate that it is possible to use alternate energy sources to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels even in a complex context.

 AIM:

The project aims to investigate opportunities to reduce natural gas consumption at the city’s recreation centres. Specifically, it will:

• Study the feasibility of eliminating natural gas consumption within the city’s recreation centres; and
• Propose a plan to switch the fuel source to a sustainable alternative and assess the technical and financial feasibility of doing so.

(Note: the proposal should allow the recreation centres to continue operations as usual but be powered by a more sustainable alternative).

KEY PROJECT TASKS:

1. Review examples of businesses and industries which have fuel switched and eliminated natural gas consumption.
2. Develop an understanding of the City of Melbourne’s goals and implementation strategy outlined in the Climate Change Mitigation Strategy and of the recreation centres’ operations. This can be done by reviewing relevant policy/strategy documents and meeting (interviewing) relevant stakeholders.
3. Visit recreation sites to collect data on energy use and carbon emissions.
4. Identify which recreation centre is most suitable for a pilot project to switch from gas into other sustainable energy sources.
5. Within the pilot project, identify the most appropriate fuel switching technology/methodology, for example:

• Electrification
• Waste to energy
• Biofuels/Green Gas
• Hydrogen
• Other…

6. Consolidate results, findings and recommendations in final report and presentation

DELIVERABLES:

The project report shall be written up as a business case including, but not limited to, the following sections:

• Executive Summary
• Background and baseline research
• Pilot Study
• Recommendations

The project deliverables shall be written for a wide audience. It should be assumed the majority do not have an in-depth understanding of energy efficiency audits.

WORK METHOD: TBD

KEY SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• High degree of independence, motivation and professionalism
• Ability to quickly learn new concepts and adapt to new environments
• Ability to effectively liaise with a range of stakeholders
• Scientific rigour, attention to detail and good data analysis skills required
• Advanced excel skills and IT knowledge preferred

STUDENT SELECTION:

Students submit expression of interest to Dr. Nina Nguyen at: nina.nguyen@rmit.edu.au

Selected students are subject to final approval from the City of Melbourne.

Deadline for applications: 24 February 2020