David Hill

David J. Hill is Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at The University of Sydney. He is conducting and supervising research on future power grids with high renewables in the Centre for Future Energy Networks. He is also Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Electrical Energy Systems in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. For 2021-22, he is Professor of Energy Systems in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (UNSW Sydney). He received the BE (Electrical Engineering) and BSc (Mathematics) degrees from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1972 and 1974, respectively. He received the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 1976 in a world-renowned research group for Systems and Control engineering. He then did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley before starting his academic career back at the University of Newcastle. During 2013-2020, he held the positions of Chair of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Electrical Energy Systems in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong; he was also the Program Coordinator for the multi-university RGC Theme-based Research Scheme Project on Sustainable Power Delivery Structures for High Renewables. He previously held positions at the University of Sydney including the Chair of Electrical Engineering during 1994-2002 and again in 2010-2013 along with an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship. He was Foundation Director of the Centre for Future Energy Networks during 2010-2018 and part-time Professor 2013-2020. During 2005-2010, he was an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University and, from 2006, also a Theme Leader (Complex Networks) and Deputy Director in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems. He has also held academic and substantial visiting positions at the universities of Melbourne, California (Berkeley), Newcastle (Australia), Lund (Sweden), Munich and in Hong Kong (City and Polytechnic Universities). He holds several honorary positions in Australia, Hong Kong and China. He is also a consultant in the area of power and energy issues in Australia and internationally. During 1996-1999 and 2001-2004, he served as Head of the respective departments in Sydney and Hong Kong. He holds or has held numerous honorary professorships in Australia, Hong Kong and China. Professor Hill has pursued a range of research interests over his career in energy systems, control systems, complex networks, learning systems and stability analysis. His work is now mainly focussed on issues for future energy and power networks with the aim to bring science to accelerate the clean energy transition. Professor Hill is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, USA, the International Federation of Automatic Control, the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He received the 2021 IEEE Power and Energy Society Prabha S. Kundur Power System Dynamics and Control Award and has been selected as the 2022 IEEE Control System Society Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize winner.

Current Work

The tremendous energy transition occurring world-wide and particularly in Australia has been described recently in terms of decarbonisation, digitalisation, distributed (energy resources) and democratisation. The decarbonisation agenda in NSW has a high profile under Minister Matt Kean. This is boosted greatly by entrepreneurial leaders leading to a whole new future grid emerging in terms of energy hubs, batteries, renewable energy zones (REZs) and new more flexible transmission. Alongside this, new DERs - particularly rooftop PV - based on households and commercial buildings are being installed at a world-leading rate, i.e. the total generation capacity roughly matches that of a large coal-fired power station as plans emerge to retire these stations much earlier than originally planned.

Along with these DERs comes a new empowerment of consumers (aka customers, users, prosumers, prosumagers, people in houses etc) to serve their own power needs and sell services to the grid maybe via aggregator entities including microgrids, VPPs and new markets. This represents a new democratisation replacing the previously highly centralised structures. These changes overall will lead to a completely new electrical system that will work to provide inexpensive, reliable power with near-zero emissions. This will be enabled by digitalisation where modern data-based methods for monitoring and control can manage the new overall system.

To name just two areas of interest now: 1) there is a need to deal with new dynamics analysis and control (fast EMT in non-synchronous inverter-based dynamics replacing the time separated scales of classic RMS models); 2) the optimal granulated architecture from households (at kWs) to the national grid (at GWs). There is much research to be done with some big questions to answer. For example the latter topic asks how to better coordinate the two systems based around DERs and REZs so customers do not pay twice. These questions must be answered during an unprecedented rate of change and need to be addressed in a multi-disciplinary way with engineers, economists and social scientists. Moreover the answers cannot be found in overseas experience with our unique ‘stringy’ grid and the uncertainties from the rate of change. Thus Australia needs research in this vital area of future electrical energy supply oriented to our own needs.

Companies

• Professor The University of New South Wales (2021)
• Emeritus Professor The University of Hong Kong (2021)
• Professor Emeritus The University of Sydney (2020)
• Program Leader Homes CRC RACE for 2030 (2021 — 2022)
• Professor The University of Hong Kong (2013 — 2020)
• Chair of Electrical Engineering The University of Hong Kong (2013 — 2020)
• Honorary Professor of Automatic Control Northeastern University, China (2005 — 2020)
• Professor The University of Sydney (2013 — 2020)
• Honorary Professor of Electronic Engineering City University of Hong Kong (2005 — 2014)

Education

• PhD The University of Newcastle (1974 — 1976)
• B.Sc. University of Queensland (1972 — 1973)
• B.E. University of Queensland (1968 — 1971)