The Hunter region has a rich history of innovation and ingenuity, of reinvention and resilience, of gritty creativity and industry.

As the largest regional economy in Australia (larger than Tasmania, Northern Territory, or the ACT), the Hunter region boast world-class manufacturing capabilities and attracts the brightest talent from leading innovators, sustainability experts, progressive manufacturers, and technologists.

Being immersed in this environment fuels our innovation, complements our expertise, and drives optimum outcomes for our clients.

NTDC is tasked with validating and actioning the valuable strategic planning work that has been undertaken in recent years to underpin effective and sustainable economic transition in Northern and North-East Tasmania whilst continuing to place the importance of education and health in our communities.

The Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCOSS) is the peak body for the community services industry in Tasmania. We advocate to challenge and change the systems, behaviours and attitudes that create poverty, inequality and exclusion, to ensure all Tasmanians have the same opportunity to live a good life.

General purpose artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT, are quickly transforming the way AI systems are built and deployed.

While these technologies are expected to brin benefits in the coming year, their disruptive nature raises questions around privacy and intellectual property rights, liability and accountability, and concerns about the potential to spread disinformation and misinformation.

Anyone can have a great idea or come up with an innovative solution to a problem. The hard part when you’re in a region can be getting access to the help you need to turn ideas into a business and a business into a global success story. Advance Queensland is helping Queenslanders to grow their business and build an innovation economy.

The Whitsunday Climate Innovation Hub, an initiative of the Whitsunday Regional Council, is aiming to improve the resilience of the Whitsunday region in the face of increasing climate change hazards, such as storm tide and coastal erosion. The Hub acts as a think-tank, bringing together national and international experts in law, climate adaptation, finance, insurance, tourism and agriculture, and provides climate information to the wider community.

The economy of the Greater Whitsunday region offers diverse investment opportunities with a proven track record for growth and prosperity. The Isaac region is home to the Bowen Basin, housing the largest coal mining deposits in Australia. Most of Queensland’s prime coking coal reserves are mined here, including the highest-grade metallurgical coal in the world.

Mackay is the centre of one of Australia’s most developed Mining, Equipment, Technology and Service (METS) industries and has enormous bio-futures potential. The Whitsundays is not only a world-class tourism destination, attracting more than a million visitors annually, but is a highly developed food producing region with sugar cane, horticulture and aquaculture.

Recycling is one of the easiest and most effective ways of reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill. Recyclable waste is a valuable resource. Recycling in the workplace is not only good for the environment but also makes good business sense.

Our Vision is to build a sustainable robotics industry in Australia by supporting the entire robotics ecosystem, from the companies building robots to those researching and developing new robotic technologies, robotics educators and enthusiasts, and the companies looking to adopt robots and robotics-related technologies.

Becoming a CASA Certified Drone Pilot is crucial in your journey to operate drones in a professional and commercial environment. How to establish and operate drone business is often overlooked by people entering the Drone Industry. This is the Global Drone Solutions’ difference! We’ll help you establish and run a successful drone business by sharing our knowledge and providing you with valuable resources and tools to help you start your business and establish a long-term career in the Drone Industry.

Our Drone Experts help you choose from our wide range of Drone Pilot Training Courses delivered in either a classroom or online environment. From Introductory to Advanced, our Remote Pilot Training Courses are comprehensive, industry-leading and designed to enhance your knowledge and skills. Whether you are seeking to improve your drone flying skills or begin your Drone Pilot career, Global Drone Solutions is the only choice.

Flow batteries were first developed in the 1980s, by now-Emeritus Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos at the University of New South Wales.

“Most of the batteries that we use are enclosed systems,” says Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov, a chemist and research lead in battery materials at the Australian National University’s Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program.

In the coming decades, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind will increasingly dominate the conventional power grid. Because those sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy, ensuring a reliable grid — one that can deliver power 24/7 — requires some means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later when they’re not. A promising technology for performing that task is the flow battery, an electrochemical device that can store hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy — enough to keep thousands of homes running for many hours on a single charge. Flow batteries have the potential for long lifetimes and low costs in part due to their unusual design. In the everyday batteries used in phones and electric vehicles, the materials that store the electric charge are solid coatings on the electrodes.

A flow battery contains two substances that undergo electrochemical reactions in which electrons are transferred from one to the other. When the battery is being charged, the transfer of electrons forces the two substances into a state that’s “less energetically favourable” as it stores extra energy. (Think of a ball being pushed up to the top of a hill.) When the battery is being discharged, the transfer of electrons shifts the substances into a more energetically favourable state as the stored energy is released. (The ball is set free and allowed to roll down the hill.)

At the core of a flow battery are two large tanks that hold liquid electrolytes, one positive and the other negative. Each electrolyte contains dissolved “active species” — atoms or molecules that will electrochemically react to release or store electrons. During charging, one species is “oxidized” (releases electrons), and the other is “reduced” (gains electrons); during discharging, they swap roles. Pumps are used to circulate the two electrolytes through separate electrodes, each made of a porous material that provides abundant surfaces on which the active species can react. A thin membrane between the adjacent electrodes keeps the two electrolytes from coming into direct contact and possibly reacting, which would release heat and waste energy that could otherwise be used on the grid.

A critical factor in designing flow batteries is the selected chemistry. The two electrolytes can contain different chemicals, but today the most widely used setup has vanadium in different oxidation states on the two sides. That arrangement addresses the two major challenges with flow batteries.

First, vanadium doesn’t degrade. If you put 100 grams of vanadium into your battery and you come back in 100 years, you should be able to recover 100 grams of that vanadium — as long as the battery doesn’t have some sort of a physical leak.

And second, if some of the vanadium in one tank flows through the membrane to the other side, there is no permanent cross-contamination of the electrolytes, only a shift in the oxidation states, which is easily remediated by re-balancing the electrolyte volumes and restoring the oxidation state via a minor charge step. Most of today’s commercial systems include a pipe connecting the two vanadium tanks that automatically transfers a certain amount of electrolyte from one tank to the other when the two get out of balance.

Remote microgrids are perfect for flow batteries of all scales.

They’re not temperature sensitive, like lithium-ion batteries, so they can operate quite comfortably in hot conditions, which is a real benefit. And they’re non-flammable.

Australia has around 18% of the world’s vanadium reserves, mostly in Western Australia – hence Australian Vanadium’s interests. The element is still, mostly, used in steel, but flow batteries are going to change things.

The TCI Oceania Chapter aims to advocate, inspire, and enhance collaboration, knowledge and capabilities among people and organisations that facilitate and strengthen regional development ecosystems across Oceania.

HILT CRC is a collaborative venture that brings together industries, researchers, and government organisations to share the responsibility for the big shift of decarbonisation. We have the scale to make a difference and seek new low-carbon technologies and methods that will overcome barriers, and help transition the steel, iron, alumina, and cement industries to decarbonise heavy industry.

The SmartSat CRC is a consortium of universities and other research organisations, partnered with industry that has been funded by the Australian Government to develop know-how and technologies in advanced telecommunications and IoT connectivity, intelligent satellite systems and Earth observation next generation data services.

The Blue Economy CRC was established to undertake industry focussed research and training to support the growth of the Blue Economy with a focus on two new, emerging, and transitioning ocean industries for Australia: offshore aquaculture and renewable energy production.

Antimicrobial resistance kills more people each year than COVID, and peak health bodies warn the situation will get worse unless urgent action is taken. In response, Australia’s top researchers have partnered with government and industry to find solutions to this global problem.