Who is the Most Innovative Company in Australia?

Australian Electrical Engineering firm NOJA Power Switchgear is celebrating the result of the 2019 Most Innovative Company in Australia after being recognised as the 3rd Most Innovative Company in the Mining, Agriculture and Utilities Sector in the contest by the Australian Financial Review.

NOJA Power’s latest project supported by ARENA to develop and deploy Synchrophasors on the Medium Voltage Grid was showcased as the companies’ leading innovation in 2019, besting their 2018 result of 13th by 10 places.

“To be recognised as one of the most innovative companies in Australia is a testament to our ongoing commitment to R&D as a cornerstone of our business,” reports NOJA Power Group Managing Director Neil O’Sullivan. “The ARENA project is also innovative in that it brings together the Australian Government, The Australian Energy Market Operator AEMO, Two Electricity Utilities in Energy Qld and Ausnet, Two Universities in University of Queensland and Deakin University and NOJA Power as the project lead to install medium voltage reclosers around the grid, connect them to a secure cloud to store Big Data (synchrophasors) for analysis by 5 PhD candidates at the two universities to research better ways to connect and manage large scale renewable energy grid connections. Government, Uni's, Utilities and Industry working together to create the electricity grid of the future.”

The NOJA Power Innovation entry showcased the companies RC-20 Synchrophasor Edition: a computer-based controller for our high-voltage switchgear. These controllers provide high-resolution readings of the electricity parameters on the distribution powerlines and allow for control algorithms to respond to rapid changes in these network parameters.

The data from these devices is piped through a secure 4G Virtual Private Network (VPN) to a centralised cloud storage. This data is then processed via scalable computing assets to calculate electricity grid stability and performance parameters, facilitating active control and real-time state estimation of the distribution grid far greater than technology available today.

NOJA Power’s innovation project pioneers a new method of controlling the distribution grid, by leveraging the technology in processing big data to crunch vast volumes of live data about the Australian electricity distribution grid. Full list of Most Innovative Companies in Australia: