Hugh Outhred

Hugh Outhred has held academic appointments at the University of New South Wales since 1973 and retired on 30/9/07 from the positions of Presiding Director, Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets and Associate Professor and Head, Energy Systems Research Group in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He is now a Professorial Visiting Fellow at UNSW. Hugh Outhred has a BE (Hons1) and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sydney and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy.

Hugh Outhred was a Fulbright Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, USA in 1993 and has also held visiting positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA, the University of Liverpool in the UK, the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, Roskilde University Centre in Denmark and Murdoch University in WA. He has been a member of the Board of the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy and an Associate Director of the Centre for Photovoltaic Devices and Systems at UNSW. He is a member of the CSIRO Energy Flagship Advisory Committee.

Hugh Outhred was a Member of the National Electricity Tribunal (NET) throughout its existence from 1998 to 2006, when it was replaced by alternative regulatory arrangements. The NET was a quasi-judicial appeal body for the National Electricity Market, established under the National Electricity Law. He was also a member of the NSW Licence Compliance Advisory Board (LCAB) throughout its existence from 1997 to 2000. It advised the NSW parliament on compliance by electricity retailers and distributors with their licence conditions.

Hugh Outhred's main research interests are in the areas of electricity industry restructuring and sustainability. His current research includes the incorporation of voltage values into electricity market design, the integration of stochastic, non-storable renewable energy resources into restructured electricity industries, the design of industry governance and regulatory arrangements and energy sustainability for remote rural communities.

Hugh Outhred has provided advisory and educational services for governments, non-government organisations, the electricity supply industry and private industry in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. Since 1988, he has taught over 70 short courses on electricity industry restructuring in many of the above countries.

In 1985 and 1986 Hugh Outhred worked on secondment to the Energy Authority of New South Wales as a special adviser on renewable energy and electricity industry restructuring. He was founding Head of the Forecasting Branch with responsibility for demand forecasting and infrastructure planning for electricity and gas in 1986. While at the University of California Berkeley in 1993 and 1994, he co-authored a report on electricity industry restructuring for the California Energy Commission. In 1995 & 1996 he led a project for the Australian National Grid Management Council that undertook electricity-trading experiments to trial the proposed National Electricity Market trading rules prior to their implementation. Professor Vernon Smith, who shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002, was one of Hugh Outhred’s collaborators on this project.

In 2000 Hugh Outhred worked on secondment to Murdoch University, contributing to the development of a new undergraduate course on renewable energy engineering. In 2001 and 2002 he was seconded to the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy as Product Executive, Grid-connected Renewable Energy Services, to lead a research program on grid-connected renewable energy resources. From 2005 to 2008, Hugh Outhred has led a UNSW research project for the Australian Greenhouse Office on facilitating the uptake of wind energy in the Australian electricity industry and in 2008 he is leading a research project for AusAID on ways to improve the sustainability of energy service delivery for rural communities in Indonesia and China.