Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official 2024 event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event was timely and relevant for all stakeholders working in the energy sector.
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Martin BoettcherLead Asset Engineer, Ventia EngineeringSession: ROUNDTABLE 5: Best in class – Systems and processes for reliability maintenance planning
Martin Boettcher works as Lead Asset Engineer for Ventia Engineering. He has a passion for developing asset management solutions that are practical and efficient to implement. His specialises in criticality analysis, maintenance strategies & optimisation and the management of equipment condition. He also does a lot of work in equipment reliability and major failure analysis. He has over 30 years of experience in power stations and water infrastructure in a variety of system engineering, management, and consulting roles. His paper “High speed rule based criticality analysis” was awarded best paper at AMPeak 2021.
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Luca GaragnaniChief Operating Officer, OptMonitor, machinemonitor®Session: ROUNDTABLE 2: Advances in AI and maintenance for electrical machinery
Session: Screening of large medium voltage network using AI as an engineering tool
Luca Garagnani holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering with particular expertise in Partial Discharge Testing. Luca studied under the renowned Prof. Montanari and Prof. Cavallini at Bologna University. His experience has centred around the measurement and analysis of MV/HV cables, transformers, switchgear and rotating machines throughout Europe, USA, Asia, and the Middle East. During this experience he has also been involved in teaching and tutoring on the theory of partial discharge and measurement techniques.
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Jason KrstanoskiGeneral Manager – Network Operations, TransgridJason Krstanoski is the General Manager of Network Operations at Transgrid, a transmission network service provider.
He is responsible for managing the network in real-time, planning and overseeing system outages, and ensuring the timely repair and restoration of defective assets, to enable safe and reliable operations. This includes the preparation for and management of significant major network incidents or threats to the power system.
Previously, he worked at Ausgrid for over 20 years, in a range of operational and commercial roles including Head of System Control and Head of Procurement.
Jason holds a BE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology Sydney and an MBA (Executive Masters in Business Administration) from the Australian Graduate School of Management.
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Tony O’BrienManaging Director, Australian WindersTony brings over 45 years of experience in the Electric Motor/Generator Repair industry to his role. His journey began with a comprehensive four year apprenticeship, where he honed his skills and expertise across all facets of the trade, igniting a lifelong passion for the field. Since the early 1990s, Tony has owned and operated a successful winding contracting business, traversing the globe to apply his craft in diverse locations.
Throughout his career, Tony has held pivotal roles such as Technical Manager in the Philippines, Business Manager in Malaysia, and Project Manager in New Zealand. These experiences laid the foundation for the establishment of Australian Winders in 2008. Australian Winders has recently celebrated 16 successful years in business, a testament to Tony's leadership and dedication to excellence. His unparalleled knowledge and leadership have been pivotal in shaping Australian Winders into the exceptional international company it is today. His dedication to excellence continues to drive innovation and growth within the industry.al company it is today. His dedication to excellence continues to drive innovation and growth within the industry.
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Jon PembertonChairman, machinemonitor®Session: Opening remarks from the Chair
Session: Opening remarks from the Chair
Dr. Jon Pemberton is the Chair/ Non-Executive Director and a major shareholder of Machinemonitor Pty Ltd, a company focused on condition monitoring and assessment of critical electrical assets, such as high voltage motors, generators, cables and transformers. Machinemonitor services an extensive blue chip customer list throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Jon is also the Managing Director of Zest Energy Pty Ltd a company he formed in 2007, along with fellow Director Dr.Tony Vassallo. Zest Energy is an Australian company specialising in Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Energy Storage solutions. When Zest was working with leading Korean Lithium battery manufacturer Kokam, ground breaking projects were undertaken under Jon’s leadership, such as the 35MW/12MWh spinning reserve displacement project for Alinta Energy, a world first at the time.
As well as the Energy Sector, Jon has extensive experience in the heavy engineering sector, having held Executive General Management roles running major divisions of Australian National industries and Evans Deakin Industries. At that time these companies were leading ASX listed companies. He was also a former Managing Director of CCI Pope, now acquired by Bureau Veritas. CCI Pope was the Australian market leader in the provision of outsourced reliability engineering solutions for the mining and process industry sectors.
Jon has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London University. He is a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers London and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy
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Praema RangaProduct Services Manager, Boeing Defence AustraliaPraema Ranga, Product Services Manager at Boeing Defence Australia, is a mechanical engineer with over 20 years’ experience, currently leading teams in the field of Air Combat and Electronic Attack.
Praema began her career in manufacturing and production in the resources industry in Western Australia. She has gone on to work in control room operations, major projects, asset management, design management, operations, sustainment and leadership in the resources, energy and defence industries. Her career has seen her leading teams on complex programs in high risk environments in cities and remote regions across Australia.
A chartered professional engineer (CPEng) and a registered professional engineer of Queensland (RPEQ), Praema is also a fellow of Engineers Australia (FIEAust) and a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia (FGIA).
Praema is passionate about developing talent in engineering and operations, and building diverse and high performing teams. She is the Deputy Chair of Women in Engineering Queensland, and a board member of the Boeing Women Inspiring Leadership’s ANZSP chapter.
Praema has an honor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Curtin University, MBA from University of Western Australia and a Master of Science in Renewable Energy from Murdoch University.
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Ron ScollayPrincipal Engineer, machinemonitor®Session: Best practise condition monitoring and risk assessment for HV motors and generators
Ron Scollay FIE (Aust) CPEng NER APEC Engineer Int PE Aus FSAIEE is a Specialist Electrical Engineer with 35 years’ experience in the field of electrical machines and auxiliary equipment. His experience covers general design, re-design, construction, testing and investigating application problems and failures of AC, DC and high voltage motors, generators and auxiliary equipment.
Ron is currently Principal Engineer at Machinemonitor where he has been assisting the Australian mining and industry for the last 22 years. Achievements have included assistance with failure recovery of strategic motors, preparing detailed repair specifications and audit plans, preparing procurement specifications for new motors, to be customised to suit existing installations. A focus is the development of specialised test strategies for integrity evaluation of machines and then applying engineering diligence to test and condition monitoring results using Riskmonitor® proprietary tools and software. The Riskmonitor® method quantifies a health index for the electrical rotating machines and identifies failure mechanisms used to direct condition monitoring and maintenance.
10 years’ experience in the design office an international OEM served as the foundation for Ron’s interest in machines and drives. The wide range of machines large DC drives, high voltage asynchronous and synchronous motors and generators in Australia has presented the tapestry maintaining Ron’s interest, never a dull moment! 6MW DC mine winders, specialised rewind of 60 year old 20MW generators with ekiimeier roebelled bars and push through windings, modelling and considering the incident voltage on motor, cable and VSD systems are some examples of recent projects.
Ron is continuing this work and mentors the undergraduates and new engineers in machinemonitor and the customer base, sharing this knowledge and encouraging inquisitive analysis to provide an expert consulting service in the field of electrical machines.
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Kate SummersPrincipal Consultant, EkisticaKate is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers, and an experienced power systems and control engineer with extensive electrical experience, market and regulatory knowledge. Her broad engineering knowledge has been gained over 29 years of engineering practice covering a wide range of practical field experience, power system analysis, transmission planning, operational control, regulatory compliance and project connection negotiation. She has worked on all aspects of renewable energy projects and is passionate and dedicated to bringing about an orderly transition to a low carbon future.
In 2020 Kate was jointly awarded National Professional Electrical Engineer of the Year for her work identifying the root cause of the deterioration in system frequency.
Kate’s recent focus is on the bulk integration of multiple large generation projects within new high voltage transmission associated within Renewable Energy Zones. Kate has been working through the challenges of how to collectively model and tune a large number of Inverter Based generators to study their connection to a transmission network under design in a broader system that is itself undergoing significant change.