Dr Thomas Longden from the Institute for Culture and Society and the Urban Transformations Research Centre has won the 2024 Research Impact Competition, presenting his insightful research project, ‘Temperature-related Energy Insecurity in Remote Indigenous Communities’.
An annual highlight of Western Sydney University’s Research Week, this year’s Competition saw 16 researchers compete in the high-speed event, where they shared their work and highlighted the impact and contributions to the community stemming from their research, in just five minutes.
In Australia, prepayment for electricity primarily operates in remote Indigenous communities – and when pre-paid credit runs out electricity is disconnected.
These disconnections are not due to grid stability or outages and Dr Longden’s research found that disconnections are frequent, with de-energisation occurring almost as soon as credit runs out.
In his presentation, Dr Longden shared research findings that demonstrate the extent of energy insecurity in remote Indigenous communities.
“91 per cent of households experienced a disconnection from electricity in a given year, 74 per cent were disconnected more than ten times and we found that households with high electricity use had a one in three chance of a disconnection during heatwaves or coldwaves,” said Dr Longden.
“Prepayment for energy is a blind spot for Australia and many energy experts we have spoken to hadn’t even heard of this issue. They may know that most of these communities rely on diesel generators but haven’t heard of prepayment or a power card.”
