About us
Welcome to Energy & Utilities Data Connect Sydney - a vibrant community for data professionals and enthusiasts working in and around the energy and utilities sectors. Our mission is to bring together people passionate about energy, analytics, and technology, fostering genuine relationships, learning, and collaboration in Sydney’s dynamic ecosystem.
Whether you’re a data scientist, engineer, analyst, or simply curious about the power of data in the future of energy, you’ll find value here. We host meetups featuring networking sessions, practical talks, panel discussions, and knowledge-sharing for all experience levels. Expect to learn about industry trends, discover actionable insights, and swap stories with peers who share your interests.
Join us to:
Connect with like-minded professionals and build lasting relationships
Stay informed on the latest energy, utilities and data trends
Share knowledge, best practices, and fresh ideas in a friendly, collaborative setting
Our goal is to create a welcoming group where everyone feels included and inspired to grow - personally and professionally. Whether you work for an energy company, a startup, or are just passionate about data-driven innovation, you’re welcome at Energy & Utilities Data Connect Sydney.
Let’s shape the future of energy together - one meetup at a time!
Upcoming events
1
From Sensors to Decisions: Real-World Energy Data Pipelines
NCS Sydney, 10 Shelley St, Barangaroo, New South Wales, AUJoin us for an evening of practical, in-the-trenches talks from teams building modern energy data platforms. We’ll explore how OT data from SCADA, OSI PI, and PLCs is streamed into the lakehouse and turned into AI-powered, self-service analytics for a mission-critical NSW electricity distributor.
Who should attend?
Data engineers, architects, analysts, and ML practitioners working in or alongside the energy and utilities sector - including generation, networks, retail, regulatory, and OT engineering. Curious newcomers are very welcome.
Both sessions are highly practical, focused on real systems, trade-offs, and lessons learned.Talk 1: From Dashboards to Dialogue - Taking AI/BI Genie to Production
Speaker: Rajat Naik, Essential Energy
With 60 active report requests, 4–6 week BI delivery cycles, and strict regulatory timelines, the traditional reporting model couldn’t keep up with the speed of transformation Essential Energy is going through.
Their solution: deploying Databricks AI/BI Genie as a production-grade interface for 50+ stakeholders across finance, operations, compliance, and program leadership.
Under the hood:- Unity Catalog–governed semantic layer with 8 domain models and 120+ validated metrics
- Sub-second query performance over 1.4 TB of data
- Near real-time data sharing between AWS and Azure using Delta Sharing
What you’ll learn:
- A reference architecture for governed self-service analytics in regulated environments
- How to enforce row-level security, column masking, and lineage for natural language queries
- Why they didn’t wait for a “perfect” dimensional model - and what they shipped instead
Talk 2: The OT Data Ingestion Stack - Streaming Sensor Data into the Lakehouse
Speaker: Pravin Varma, Databricks
Getting OT data into the lakehouse often means building and maintaining complex Kafka pipelines. This talk introduces three open-source connectors that simplify the process:- Ignition Zerobus Connector - real-time streaming of tag changes
- OSI PI Lakeflow Connector - pull-based sync of high-value PI tables (a licensing alternative to AVEVA Connect)
- Unified OT Client - Docker-based edge gateway with ISA-95 normalization and store-and-forward buffering
Bonus: an OT Data Simulator spanning 16 industries, 7 PLC vendors, and 379 physics-based sensors - ideal for testing when live data isn’t available.
Event Details
Date: 27 May
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: NCS Sydney Office, Level 4, 10 Shelley St, BarangarooHuge thanks to NCS for hosting!
51 attendees
Past events
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