Weighing only 16 kg per square metre on the roof (compared to up to 100 kg/sqm with conventional flat panels systems) the system is particularly well suited to meeting industrial and commercial static loading limits. The panels have been tested to withstand wind speeds up to 209kph and do not require rooftop penetration, attachments or ballast. The panels can be swiftly connected through a series of clicks, thereby greatly reducing installation time and costs.

Installed horizontally, the panels cast no shadow across vacant roof space, increasing useable roof space. The lightweight and self ballasting feature allows for easy manoeuvring – panels can be placed over previously unusable parts of the roof such as air ducts and other piping. For access, panels are simply moved aside.

Phoenix Solar testing has shown the energy yield of the Solyndra panel to be competitive with conventional modules mounted at about the latitude angle. Overall, Solyndra’s system can provide higher electricity output per rooftop. The commercial and industrial application of this new technology from Solyndra has the potential to greatly assist local industry with its peak daytime electricity needs, thereby reducing the risk of summer black outs making electricity supply more reliable during hot summer periods.

Having an idea is only the starting point, knowing how to turn an idea into an experience for your customers is profitable. Find a solution to your problem, expand, build on, and shape ideas into tangible, innovative products and services. Compete through origionality. “me to” product is not going to cut it out there. Need help? www.ivoke.com.au

Infrastructure

To foster an environment that supports and values innovation and knowledge, the Queensland Government and the Brisbane City Council have invested strongly in research and development infrastructure. Brisbane’s innovation is enhanced by the following world-class infrastructure hubs of excellence:

* Brisbane’s Knowledge Corridor – a four kilometre line of tertiary campuses, research precincts and cultural/creative facilities transecting the city centre.

* PACE (Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence) – a world-class research, education, clinical practice and industry precinct.

* Sustainable Minerals Institute – partners with industry to research, test, implement and innovate sustainable development practices.

* BioPharmaceuticals Australia – will be Australia’s first contract scale-up manufacturing organisation (due in 2011).

Collaboration

Brisbane’s innovation has accelerated with help from the collaborations of the government, private industry and academia. A number of its signature partnerships include:

* Boeing and UQ – Th is concentrates on major research programs including advanced composites, light robotics and ageing aircraft technologies.

* Brisbane Airport Corporation and QUT – based on a shared vision to apply scientifi c outcomes and academic rigor through ‘whole-of-organisation’ involvement.

* Invest Brisbane Corporate Partnership program – with a total of 15 partners, from property development, and banking industries and universities to local councils, it aims to expand the Brisbane economy via the provision of expert local advice to investors.

Recognition

Now in its fourth year, the Lord Mayor’s Business Awards celebrates the achievements of Brisbane business. It recognises and rewards excellence and the corporate sector’s outstanding contributions to the growth of Brisbane’s economy. Hosted by Lord Mayor Campbell Newman together with Brisbane Marketing’s Invest Brisbane, the event is a showcase of innovative Brisbane companies at the cutting edge. An initiative of Invest Brisbane, the Awards encompass exciting categories including ‘Business Innovation’, ‘Sustainability in Business’ and ‘Young Business Person of the Year’.

About Brisbane Marketing

Brisbane Marketing is the official marketing authority for the Greater Brisbane Region. The agency’s mission is to promote Brisbane and its surrounds as an emerging global city to local, national and international markets, with the ultimate goal of achieving optimum social and economic benefi ts for the local community, residents and businesses.

Website: www.brisbanemarketing.com.au

The Megablender, a huge-scale metal blender the size of a large water tank, has five hardened-alloy cutting blades that rotate up to 500 rpm in both directions.

It is able to shred entire steel drums containing solid and semi-solid hazardous and combustible waste materials generated by communities and industry.

These waste materials contained in the bottom of the drums are often solid and require manual removal prior to processing.  In some cases the material cannot be effectively removed and the drums with the solid material are either sent to land fill or stored later for offsite disposal or processing.

The Megablender allows the shredded metal to be washed for recovery and recycling and the waste contents to be processed as solvent based fuel (SBF).

SBF is a liquid fuel used as an alternative fuel in the cement industry and is derived from liquid, solid, and sludgy hazardous and combustible waste.

The SBF is provided to Cement Australia, which operates cement manufacturing plants in Queensland and Tasmania

The capacity to blend existing incoming solid wastes and accumulated solid drum stock into SBF reduces the amount of waste disposed to landfill or sent offsite and recovers 100% of steel for recycling.

Sustainability Victoria provided funding assistance and technical support for the project.

Kevin Inkster with his award winning invention, the Petrol Allsaw

Western Australia’s traditional strengths in mining and agriculture have provided a strong and sophisticated foundation for significant advances in research and development (R&D), sparking a wealth of activity in many new industries. Some of these industries include information and communications technologies (ICT), renewable energies and biotechnology.

Strong government support has and continues to create a nurturing environment for R&D. The Department of Commerce, through the Science, Innovation and Business Division, works to assist industry to commercialise innovative ideas and increase awareness of innovation and scientific endeavour in Western Australia.

The Division strives to make Western Australia a competitive environment for innovators, innovative companies and entrepreneurs alike by facilitating their access to capital, human resources, management expertise and R&D skills.

Western Australia’s Innovation Centre, located at Bentley Technology Park, works with the State’s creative minds to provide support and guidance on how to turn their ideas into reality.

The State’s innovative capacity is growing and its creative minds are helping to ensure it will continue to do so.

A week of innovation

Last year, the State Government coordinated ‘Brilliant West Week’, a week of events designed to develop and promote innovation and creativity in Western Australia.

Brilliant West Week brought together primary, secondary and tertiary students as well as researchers and business people with a keen interest in innovation. The week encouraged students to think about careers in science and provided a platform for the development of knowledge, skills and networks for researchers and businesses looking to take new ideas for products and services to the market.

Brilliant West Week’s main event was the Leading Lights Innovation and Investment Conference. The two-day conference built links between innovators and financiers to explore pathways to commercialisation and showcased innovations from the State’s emerging industries.

The Leading Lights conference brought local entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and business people together in one location to learn about and create business partnerships.

Creative minds recognised

Brilliant West Week also showcased the entries of fi nalists for the 2008 WA Inventor of the Year Award. The Award program targets products and services at the pre-commercialisation stage and is one of Australia’s richest innovation competitions, with a total prize pool of $418,200.

The Award recognises and rewards people who are creating products or services at one of the three stages of concept development: Early Stage, Development and Ready for Market.

The WA Inventor of the Year Award has uncovered hundreds of innovations with the potential to change the way we live.

Last year’s overall and Development category winner was the Petrol Allsaw, developed by Kevin Inkster from Arbortech Pty Ltd. The Petrol Allsaw is a revolutionary and safe power tool that can cut through some of the toughest brick and stone products as well as remove tree stumps.

The Allsaw is a hand-held, petrolpowered tool with two forward-facing, oscillating blades that create a hammering and cutting action. The tool can be adjusted to cut hard materials but will not easily cut softer materials, and therefore creates a safer working environment for those who use it.

Kevin Inkster, Chief Executive of Arbortech Pty Ltd, says he came up with the concept for the Petrol Allsaw in 1985 when he had an accident with a chainsaw.

“I wanted to make a machine that didn’t have the back exposed and was safe to use,” he recalls. “It has taken nearly ten years but it finally has happened.”

The competition awarded Mr Inkster more than $100,000 for developing the revolutionary technology. He hopes to use the prize money to expand the company’s presence in the US market by developing the Petrol Allsaw prototype through the tooling stage and onto the retail fl oors of the world’s largest commercial market.

“The Allsaw has been a very big project with a huge potential return for Australia and in particular Western Australia,” he says.

The two other winners of the 2008 WA Inventor of the Year include:

Tony Wright, one of the inventors of the Cold Pain Test Kit

Winner – Early Stage category Cold Pain Test Kit Tony Wright, Heather Benson and Penny Moss, School of Physiotherapy, Curtin University of Technology

Conditions such as arthritis or whiplash can induce unusually high levels of pain unresponsive to everyday painkillers. Th e Cold Pain Test Kit is a simple diagnostic test that enables General Practitioners (GPs) to quickly identify patients that are at risk of developing severe chronic pain through a simple and inexpensive method involving a single-use, adhesive patch containing a plant extract substance. Using an electronic scale and software, GPs can make an immediate decision on which pain medication should be prescribed to such patients.

The award winning HEA mesh can help to improve safety on mine sites

Winner – Ready for Market catergory HEA Mesh
Mr Yves Potvin, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, the University of Western Australia

The HEA Mesh is designed to absorb the energy of seismic events such as rock bursts and collapses during underground mining, and to significantly improve surface support technology over the existing rock. As mines go deeper to explore for resources, the stability of underground operations becomes increasingly problematic. Th e HEA Mesh system provides a number of advantages over existing underground stabilisation technologies, including improved energy absorption, flexibility and easy installation.

For more information or to be a part of Western Australia’s innovative future visit:

Website: www.innovation.wa.gov.au
Email: innovation@commerce.wa.gov.au

republished from Australian Innovation 2009 – the print publication

Established seven years ago, NICTA is Australia’s ICT Research Centre of Excellence. It aims to become one of the world’s top ten ICT research centres by 2020. With a focus on ‘use-inspired research’, NICTA is already turning cutting-edge ideas into commercial success stories.

Getting great ideas out of the laboratory and turning them into commercial success stories is a challenge faced by research organisations around the world. History is littered with examples of cutting-edge discoveries that, while technically brilliant, failed to make the transition to business triumph.

National ICT Australia (NICTA) aims to bridge that gap with a strong commercialisation pipeline and a team committed to developing the commercial potential of each research project. Th e majority of NICTA’s funding comes from the Australian Government, with state governments and universities also contributing. NICTA selects and supports those research projects that will be of greatest national benefit. If the nation is to successfully compete in international markets, it is vital to ensure that technological breakthroughs are identified and nurtured.

With this in mind, NICTA was established in 2002 to provide a focal point for the country’s information and communications technology (ICT) research. It was charged with providing a supportive environment for Australian researchers as well as attracting the best research talent from around the world.

Since then, the organisation has grown to the point where it has fi ve research laboratories in four cities: Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane.

Use-inspired research

One of NICTA’s key diff erentiating features is its focus on what it terms ‘useinspired’ research. Th is means that all projects undertaken by the organisation must have a basis in a real-world problem or challenge.

While this policy does not preclude ‘blue-sky research’, it does serve to ensure that the eff orts of researchers remain focused on producing outcomes that have the potential to become commercially successful.

Research is gathered under four themes: embedded systems; networked systems; making sense of data; and managing complexity.

Embedded systems are the technical ‘smarts’ that form part of everything from mobile phones to cars. NICTA researchers are working on ways to make embedded systems more powerful and reliable.

Networked systems are technologies that connect the building blocks of embedded systems to form smart networks. In this area, research teams are focused on developing methods of improving network performance and management.

Making sense of vast stores of data is a growing challenge for businesses and governments around the world. NICTA teams are working on tools that can help users fi lter and search data in ways that make it valuable to them.

Meanwhile, the increasing complexity of IT systems is also posing challenges for organisations. Whether they are trying to eff ectively manage a distributed computing infrastructure or tie together multiple systems, doing the job eff ectively can be difficult. NICTA researchers are working on fundamental advances in the way complex systems are constructed and managed.

Gigabit Wireless (GiFi)

Project One of NICTA’s most widely recognised projects has been in the area of ultrahigh- speed wireless delivery technologies. Th e Gigabit Wireless (GiFi) Project has developed a world-fi rst 60GHz chip that delivers ten times the data rate of today’s wireless systems at one-tenth of the cost.

Fast wireless connections for the home could spell an end to those unsightly, cumbersome bundles of cables. Th e problem is that high definition (HD) video requires transmission speeds that are generally only available from fixed connections – around 4 gigabits per second. Th is far exceeds the transmission speeds available on existing consumer-level home wireless networks.

The answer is high-frequency wireless technology, operating in the 60 GHz spectrum. Th is can deliver multiple gigabitper- second links over short distances. Both the size and cost of fast wireless systems must be dramatically reduced to place them within reach of most householders.

NICTA’s team, based out of its Victoria and Sydney research labs, has focused on finding ways to miniaturise transmission and reception components. The team developed a method that placed all required radio frequency transmission components on a single chip. The first of its type in the world, the chip uses the common CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) process.

NICTA’s wireless transceiver operates at a transmission frequency in the millimetre wave band, which provides ten-times higher frequency than existing wireless network devices. Th is technology will permit users – primarily consumers living in ordinary households – to wirelessly transmit data at very high speed.

It has two main applications: in the home, where data between audio-visual equipment and high defi nition displays will be transmitted wirelessly, removing the need for expensive cables; and in the office environment, where PCs and laptops will be connected to displays wirelessly.

Small enough to embed in consumer electronic devices, the GiFi chip can also be produced using low-cost production techniques. This means once volume production begins, the cost of the chip is expected to drop below $10 per unit. Th e GiFi chip is an integrated transceiver built on standard bulk CMOS operating in the 57-64 GHz frequencies.

“All projects undertaken by the organisation must have a basis in a real-world problem or challenge.”

Spin-offs

Despite having started operations just six years ago, NICTA has already spun out four new companies as a result of work completed by its research teams. One of these is Monitoring Division Inc (mdi), spun out last year and already operating successfully in global markets.

mdi’s products are designed to improve the performance of global computer networks. Th e company recently received $2 million in second tranche, Series-A funding and opened a corporate operations centre in Melbourne. It also has an offi ce in California.

mdi has discovered new ways to measure the signal-to-noise ratio in optical networks and detect impairments, using the novel approach of bringing together people with optical networking and machine learning skills. Th e rationale was that, if they could capture large amounts of data about network performance and then extract meaning from it, an accurate management tool could be created.

The company has now commenced shipping its unique optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitors. NICTA’s first spin-out company, Open Kernel Labs (OKL), has also found global success, securing $US7.6 million in venture funding this year alone. The investment cemented the company’s status as one of the world’s leading suppliers of embedded virtualisation software for mobile phones and broadband consumer-electronics devices.

Backed by a large, independent team of microkernel developers, the OKL4 embedded hypervisor is now deployed on more than 250 million mobile phones worldwide. Chipset suppliers, handset OEMs, and mobile network operators depend on OK Labs to deliver high-performance solutions that decrease BOM cost, reduce complexity and speed time-to-market.

By continuing to focus on use-inspired research that presents opportunities for realworld outcomes, NICTA plans to cement its position as Australia’s leading centre for ICT research and become one of the world’s top ten ICT research centres by 2020.

Website: http://nicta.com.au

republished from Australian Innovation 2009 – the print publication