National Energy Analytics Research (NEAR) Program

The challenge

Energy behaviour is changing

The way people use energy is changing, rapidly! Solar is growing exponentially, electricity tariffs are shifting, the climate is changing, demand response technologies are emerging, energy efficiency is rising, and there is much more potential for storage and electric vehicles. All of these factors will fundamentally alter how energy is consumed across Australia.

Without a wealth of new data that captures our energy behaviour and what drives it, it will be incredibly difficult to:

• successfully forecast infrastructure requirements in our changing world
• design effective business models that deliver value to Australian households and businesses
• develop evidence-based energy policy that is founded on solid foundations.

But how do we capture, collate and communicate this complex data?

Our response

Creating a unified system

We are working with stakeholders from across the energy sector on the integrated National Energy Analytics Research (NEAR) Program[Link will open in a new window] - a central online data platform that will provide publicly accessible fine-grained energy-use data, capturing not just measured consumption, but also key demographic and technological facets of Australian consumers.

This rich dataset will provide the foundation for the energy sector to develop the efficient energy system of tomorrow, enabling new insight into how peak load, daily load shape, demographics, technology and environment all interact to shape contemporary Australian energy behaviour.

The National Energy Analytics Research (NEAR) Program infographic showing five key workstreams:

1. Deep and ongoing stakeholder engagement: working with energy sector stakeholders to determine the critical facets of a fit-for-purpose NEAR Program data platform.
2. Data sampling and collection: addressing high-priority gaps and developing statistically and ethically robust sampling methodologies for the collection of new primary energy data.
3. Fusion of data sets: bringing together high-quality pre-existing datasets to provide a comprehensive view of the key energy data domains.
4. Data innovation: leveraging cutting-edge science and research to pro-actively mange data privacy and delivering new insight and value for energy sector stakeholder.
5. Interactive data: develop a robust, user-friendly and visually appealing method for accessing all elements of the NEAR Program data platform.

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The results

An efficient future

Through extensive stakeholder engagement across the sector, the NEAR Program will develop a one-stop-shop for critical energy-use data to help energy researchers, policy makers, regulators, market operators and consumers explore how people are using energy in Australia and the many factors that are influencing that use.