At the end of November 2017, CENELEST’s first workshop on research strategy was held at the University of New South Wales. Participants from other UNSW departments such as Chemical Engineering (Prof. Jie Bao), Electrical Engineering (Prof. John Fletcher), Weather Forecast (Dr. Merlinde Kay) and Power Energy Systems (Dr. Mihai Ciobotaru) as well as Prof. Vassallo from Sustainable Energy Development at the University of Sydney were invited to the one-day meeting.
In addition to the presentation of CENELEST’s planned activities, presentations and discussions were held by all participants on the topic of renewable energies and energy storage. The aim was to identify possible synergies and cooperation opportunities with other departments and to develop a strategy based on relevant challenges, which topics are currently most relevant in terms of energy storage and how they can be addressed. All participants agreed that the topic of energy storage should be dealt with in an interdisciplinary manner and that a more regular exchange of ideas should take place in the future. Regarding the research strategy of CENELEST, starting from the discussions, topics for the year 2018 were formulated and a strategy was developed to implement them.