**Title**: Energy in the North - Jeff Adams
**Date**: December, 31 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Jeff Adams


00;00;00;16 - 00;00;10;13 [Jeff Adams] We tend not to travel or night time if we can help it, between the, the cattle, the buffalo, the camels, the donkeys, the horses, the wallabies, the kangaroos.

00;00;10;13 - 00;00;53;08 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, we travel to Australia, where I speak with Jeff Adams, senior technical specialist for Indigenous Communities for Power and Water Corporation, the utility that provides water, wastewater and power utilities
 to all of Australia's Northern Territory. Power and Water Corporation services 72 Indigenous communities including some on the remote islands off the coast of Arnhem Land. 56 of the 72 communities have their own power stations. The remaining communities are connected to a regulated grid network. The north part of the Northern Territory, sits in a monsoonal rainforest, and I began the conversation with Jeff by asking him if rainfall was the biggest issue the region faces.

00;00;53;08 - 00;01;06;15 [Jeff Adams] In the scheme of things, it's quite large, but not the largest in Australia. We have a wet season of one and a half to two meters of rain, whereas Tully here in North Queensland gets 4.5m in a year. So it's a very wet place, Tully.

00;01;06;16 - 00;01;11;10 [Amanda Byrd] Some of the communities you're cut off from for a long time and you have to store diesel.

00;01;11;10 - 00;02;24;05 [Jeff Adams] Yeah, we've got two communities in that same strange, but they are our most isolated communities. Oenpelli is approximately 300km east of Darwin. But you have to cross a river called the East Alligator. The East Alligator can actually come up for four months. Our power station out there has, a couple of 1600 kilowatt machines in it. So you can imagine trying to fuel a 1600 kilowatt genset for four months. We actually store 1.1 million liters on site so that we can get through that four month period. If we have a long, wet season. The other, the community that's in a very much the same situation is a community called Peppimenarti. And it's the same story can be cut off by road from Darwin. And also the road can be cut because another couple hundred kilometers down on the coast is a town called Wadeye. So you you can bring gear out of a barge from there. But on a big wet yeah, the road will be blocked both ways. So they are isolated as well. It's quite a small community. We've only got, 400 or 500 kilowatt set there, so I think we only store 400 or 450,000l on site.

00;02;24;05 - 00;02;29;25 [Amanda Byrd] Let's say the communities cut off, is there somebody on the ground who is maintaining those systems?

00;02;29;25 - 00;02;58;05 [Jeff Adams] Our operating model sees us operate a contract with either a community, organization or a private entity that is our eyes and ears on the ground. So we have a central service officer at each community, and he does the triage on problems and day to day maintenance. So he's the first man on site. And we make a decision whether he can repair it or whether we need to jump on an airplane and get out there and fix it ourselves.

00;02;58;05 - 00;03;02;16 [Amanda Byrd] So weather is a challenge. What are some of the other challenges?

00;03;02;16 - 00;03;32;10 [Jeff Adams] Surprisingly enough, the heat. Depending where you are in the Northern Territory, we have, ambient conditions of mid to high 40°C. And that's one of the, the major problems that and just the ruggedness of the roads. You're always blown tires. We've got, feral animals traveling across the road. We tend not to travel or night time if we can help it, between the, the cattle, the buffalo, the camels, the donkeys, the horses, the wallabies, the kangaroos.

00;03;32;10 - 00;03;36;00 [Amanda Byrd] And so you've got heat and weather and animals.

00;03;36;00 - 00;03;49;19 [Jeff Adams] There's the tyranny of distance. You've got to get diesel to the site. You've got to get, workers to site to repair any weather damage. So, yeah, tyranny of distance is probably our hardest, challenge to overcome.

00;03;49;19 - 00;03;52;20 [Amanda Byrd] Most of your, microgrids are generated by diesel fuel.

00;03;52;20 - 00;04;58;15 [Jeff Adams] Diesel is the the backbone of all of our, communities. So of our 56 power stations, we have 28 hybrid sites. And all of those 28 hybrid sites, three now have batteries at them So we actually run diesel off at two sites. And we're commissioning the third site. Daly River, when it was first put in, we were getting 55% renewable energy fraction as this sort of average for the year. There's been some load growth so that the peak loads and average loads have increased. Then we have an increase the size of the solar array or the battery capacity. So it's renewable energy fraction is down around the 45 mark now maybe a little bit lower. Titjikala, we're fairly lucky there. We got some sizes. Right. We're seeing yearly average of 60, 63% renewable energy fraction. Our best month, which is in the shoulders of the year where the weather's cool and we've got good sun, small community load. We can average, 83% renewable energy fraction for the month, which is good numbers to get that one.

00;04;58;15 - 00;05;02;10 [Amanda Byrd] Jeff Adams is a senior technical specialist for Indigenous Communities for Power and Water Corporation, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the AVÀÇÂÛ̳ Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.