Australia

I’m writing on the flight home from Australia after a two-week whirl wind business trip that took me all across Australia.

This was by far my longest work trip and furthest distance travelled on a work trip. Travelling for work has some marked differences compared to travelling for pleasure. First, I was able to travel Premium Economy (I was actually allowed to book business class but the prices seemed so absurdly high that it felt unconscionable for my company to pay it). Premium Economy was a nice upgrade from coach. Instead of 3 x 3 x 3 seats across the cabin it was 2 x 3 x 2 and each seat was wider and longer. I could fully extend my legs straight and recline more than a normal seat. As I was settling into my seat and happy how much bigger it was, the person next to me remarked how we couldn’t go fully flat like in business class. “Can you let me enjoy this for a second?” I’ve never flown anything but Economy.

It’s so easy to adjust to your new reality and always want more. Everyone in Economy wants to be in Premium Economy, everyone in Premium Economy wants to be in Business, and everyone in Business wants to be on a private jet. We should just be happy that we can travel from Washington DC to Australia in about 30 hours. 100 years ago the journey would have taken 30 days!

When I arrived to the first city of Adelaide after layovers in LAX and SYD, I was determined to beat my jet lag. I had 3 coffees and a red bull and was wandering around the city like a zombie to get fresh air because I knew if I stayed in the hotel I would fall asleep. Miraculously I made it to 9 pm and woke up at 8 am the next day with no issues. The technique worked and I didn’t feel any jetlag during my trip other than self-imposed sleep deprivation from watching late World Cup games that started at midnight. I think I will use this method for all future travel. Your body is so confused from the travel process that it is looking for any clue of what time to latch onto. The first time you go to sleep, your body sets that time as the new normal. So if you make the fatal mistake of a mistimed nap upon arrival, it is very difficult to break the cycle.

I was a bit nervous for the first customer meeting as it was a 3-hour workshop that I was supposed to lead with 5 people from the customer, and 2 people from our partner company in Australia. The whole trip I felt a bit of this imposter syndrome because I was consistently much younger than the people I was speaking with, I was from a foreign country, and I am not an electrical engineer.

Luckily, it didn’t end up being a problem as I was often in the company of electrical engineers who could handle difficult technical questions about the phase angle and short-circuit requirement and other things I had no idea.

As background on Australia, renewable energy and energy storage is a very important topic for a few reasons:

Australia has expensive electricity and lots of sun, which are the perfect conditions for people to install rooftop solar on their homes to reduce their electricity bill. As the electricity utility company loses electricity sales to customers, they must increase the price on the remaining customers in order to pay for all the investment required to keep the grid running. As a result of increasing prices, more customers choose to install rooftop solar in a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop.
· Australia has lots of sun and wind, so in addition to rooftop solar, many large-scale solar and wind farms are also being installed. Many coal plants are losing electricity sales to these renewable resources and as a result are beginning to shut down. This is great news, but it requires that energy storage be built to help manage the intermittency of renewable energy to cover the evening peak demand when electricity usage spikes as everyone comes home from work.

At the Sydney conference, I tried to explain some of these issues and how energy storage helps and I proposed that we call it the Kangaroo Curve, since the shape of the Australian net electricity load curve looks like a Kangaroo. We’ll see if it sticks but I got a few laughs from an otherwise fairly serious conference crowd.

After speaking in Sydney, I went straight to the airport to catch a flight to Perth to speak on a panel about how energy storage can help mining companies reduce their fuel cost. Perth is on the west coast of Australia, about a 4.5 hour flight from Sydney, and the entire economy of the city is driven by oil & gas and mining. The scale of the operations in the Pilbra and other regions is truly astounding. These companies are HUGE. The mining sector is very energy intensive so any steps towards using renewable energy and energy storage to reduce emissions could have a massive impact on reducing carbon emissions.

By Friday in Perth I was feeling a little lonely. I had left Washington DC a week before and the entire time I had been bouncing between meetings, flights, and hotels. Plus, I was in Perth, the most isolated city in the world as measured by distance from another city with at least 1 million people. To cheer myself up, I went to the Perth zoo to see kangaroos and koalas, and I tried my best not to creep out the moms and dads as I was the only unaccompanied zoo visitor. Turns out koalas are little junkies that sleep 22 hours a day and when they are awake eating Eucalyptus leaves for 2 hours a day, it makes them high. The Kangaroos were cool though. The only thing separating the kangaroos from the zoo visitors was a single rope that could have been easily stepped, or hopped, over.

Culturally Australia felt very familiar. I felt zero difficulty adapting culturally during the customer meetings despite being on the other side of the world. If I had been in Thailand or Japan, for example, this would not have been the case. Perhaps having grown up with an English sense of humor in our family and visiting London and Toronto helped. Melbourne felt similar to London in many ways. The city’s infrastructure, the shops, the people all felt English. They even had Australian rhyming slang similar to Cockney rhyming slang: “Steak and kidney” means Sydney apparently. I also heard the phrase “Horses for courses” at least 5 times a day. I guess it means that different problems require different solutions.

It was also great to catch up with my INSEAD study group members Peter and Sajeed who live in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively. Both took me to local restaurants including a casino with 1,000+ people to watch the Peru vs. Australia World Cup game and a speakeasy down a dingy alley that felt like it was out of the roaring 20’s.

The flight home was easy although when I returned home I had to move all of my life’s possessions 3 floors down within the same apartment building, which is a little harder after a 20 hour flight.

Adelaide, South Australia. Fairly small with a big university

The Sydney Harbor reminded me a San Francisco but it was much prettier.

Showing the Kangaroo Curve

Super-high koala

"Watcha gunna do bro?"

Kangaroos sunning themselves. They kept an eye on me, but were very used to having zoo visitors gawk at them

Winter in Brisbane was 75 degrees, but they still had a ice skating rink in the city center. The ice was completely melting so they were basically skating around in water

Doesn't this look exactly like Burger King? Not sure if the story is true, but legend has it that the franchise owner for Burger King got tired of paying royalties so just switched the name to Hungry Jacks and kept everything else the same