Energy Hack Profile - Ashley Broad

Ashley will be a mentor at this year's Energy Hack, and with ten years under her belt as a Siemens engineer she's got a lot to offer.

First starting as a graduate enginner at Siemens, Ashley is now a Quality Assurance Engineer for both gas and steam turbines at power stations around Australia, as well as a Commissioning Engineer for small gas turbines. Regardless of her accomplishments, Ashley continues to find new ways to expand her knowledge and hopes to share that ambition at this year's Hack.

You were a student in the MEInetwork18 Short Course earlier this year. What skills and knowledge did you learn in the course that will help you as a mentor at the Hack?

The Energy Systems Short Course taught me a lot, especially the ideas around the levelised cost of energy (LCOE), which is a way of quantifying the average cost of a generator over many years. I found that our estimation and assumptions we made as a group during the course were very accurate, showing how much you can grasp from a short yet intense learning period. I hope to relay that knowledge to Hack participants to help strengthen their ideas, as well providing them with skills to use beyond the Hack.

How do you plan to help Hack participants create their best ideas and results?

My plan is to provide a ‘birds eye view’ of the projects, asking questions and poking holes in ideas that a team might not see, due to being too close to their projects. Providing an outsider perspective encourages the teams to consider other possibilities and ideas, while making their pitches air tight. I can also provide advice and information regarding steam and gas turbine power stations.

Why is innovation important for the energy industry?

Innovation is vital to the sector. Through innovation we more effectively utilise our resources, therefore more efficiently produce energy and lower our emissions.

How can Australia have an affordable and reliable energy system with significantly reduced emissions?

To achieve all three aspects, we need a breakthrough innovation that will create a power generation system that consists of solar farms, wind farms and gas and coal power stations that seamlessly support each other in producing reliable and affordable energy with lower emission. Furthermore, our energy network also needs improvement e.g. more transmission lines to reduce congestion and also to increase flexibility with load/supply changes.

I am confident that that the Energy Hack teams will come up with some promising ideas that will make this work.

Find out more about Energy Hack 18 and register.