At Wednesday's 'Town Hall' forum for the proposed Illawarra Offshore Wind Zone, the community will be lucky to hear from electrical engineer Ty Christopher.
Uniting the worlds of industry and academia, Endeavour Energy’s former ‘chief engineer’ brings 37 years of hands-on experience in the electricity supply industry to his current role as Director of the Energy Futures Network at the University of Wollongong.
What’s more, he’s a true local.
“I was born in Bulli Hospital,” Ty says.
“I went to Wonoona Public School and then to Wonoona High School. My dad was a welder – worked in steel fabrication and that sort of thing, having come out of the mines. A very common story. I grew up in a common blue-collar working-class street, or a couple of them, locally here. Everyone’s dads were coal miners, truck drivers, welders, steelworkers, that sort of thing.
“I was hardwired to be an engineer from the time I could walk. My fascination was with anything mechanical – cars, motorcycles, trucks, planes. As barely more than a toddler, I used to drive the TV technician mad, sitting over his shoulder as he – back in the days when we had repairable appliances – as he was sitting there, replacing tubes and diodes … I’d be literally sitting on the floor beside him, handing him his tools and asking him, what’s that? And what does that do?”
In year 9, the careers advisor pulled Ty aside to deliver an unequivocal piece of advice: that he had to become an engineer or he’d never feel fulfilled. “I had to know how things work, how the world works,” Ty says.
At age 15, Ty saved up enough money from his first job to buy a motorcycle, even though his parents had forbidden it. “I hid it for a year and kept it at a mate’s place before my parents even knew. They only found out when I came home missing half the skin on both of my legs, having had a spectacular stack imitating Evel Knievel."
Ty survived high school and straight after took on a cadetship with the then Illawarra County Council.
“Then followed what you’d call diplomatically a ‘mailroom to boardroom’ career within the electricity supply industry, having started out on the tools and then studying engineering and finishing up with 10 years on the executive of Endeavour Energy, helping to run the company, as a direct report to the board and the CEO. And the last five years of that… the best way to describe it was I was the chief engineer of Endeavour Energy.”
His very first role with the company was as a quail, an affectionate term. “When you start out with a line crew, you are a quail, you’re a flightless bird. They don’t want you aloft.”
Ty would set up ladders, pass tools, boil the billy for morning tea. He progressed to become an overhead linesman, physically demanding work in the days before cherrypickers. “I was a skinny kid weighing all of about 64 kilograms. So the ladders weighed slightly more than I did. Carrying these, putting them up against the pole, racking them up, climbing the pole with physical belt on … Putting a platform on there, standing on the platform, and then away you go swinging your spanners and repairing the overhead power lines. That was my first job.
“I was a qualified linesman … a qualified cable jointer. I’m still a licensed electrician. And I did my electrical engineering at the University of Wollongong, my undergraduate degree.”
With electrical work comes constant risk.
“Never underestimate the intelligence of power workers,” Ty says. “Because if they weren’t highly intelligent people, they would be dying in droves, given the wherewithal that is needed mentally and, in terms of awareness, given the environments that they work in. Similar applies to people in coal mining, in steelworks … these are environments for intelligent people to operate intelligently.”
The real-world experience that Ty brings to the university is vast, including everything from the challenges of introducing new technology to dealing with community consultation to managing electricity supply across the state.
“Endeavour Energy, for example, has around 200 major substations spanning from almost Mudgee down to Ulladulla. In my career with Endeavour Energy, I worked on, planned, designed, built, augmented, or rebuilt at least 130 of those 200 substations.”
Ty retired from the corporate world in 2020.
“There was no bitterness. I have so much love for Endeavour Energy. Endeavour Energy took me from literally a pimply-faced kid from school through to being a senior executive, running a multi-billion dollar company in private ownership. One organisation took me on that journey.
“I took a year off while our eldest child did her HSC. And that was the gap year that I’d never had. It only took me until my 50s to actually have it.”
After a while, though, he grew a bit bored.
“This opportunity at the University of Wollongong as the Director, Energy Futures Network presented itself … the way I’ve been accepted by the academics across the university has been heartwarming and delightful.
“In my role, I really form a bridge between industry, certain elements of the community, representative groups and academia and the university; look to build these collaborations so that we can really be applying the university’s knowledge for the benefit of our region, for the training of our people.
“Ultimately, to be positioning our region to be a far greater success story in the clean energy and clean manufacturing space than it ever was in the fossil fuel-based industry and fossil fuel-based manufacturing. That’s a vision that I bring to the role.”
Today he still rides motorbikes (“I don’t fall off them as often now, thankfully”) and describes himself as “a mad tinkerer around the home” – which he built in Cordeaux Heights almost 25 years ago to be all electric, way ahead of his time.
“I didn’t build it all electric at the time necessarily for environmental reasons. I did build it for personal economic reasons, because it never made sense to me to pay two lots of network fees to connect your home to two complete grids, a gas grid and an electricity grid. It seemed to me you’re paying twice.”
Four years ago, he put on a solar system. “Now my home is a net exporter. I generate more electricity over a year than I use. It’s still not net economic because I generate tons of it on days like today, during the day, and then I have to pay a king’s ransom to get it back again once the sun’s gone down. But I’m working on that.”
Ty sees solar as a solution for households, but the strong and consistent supply of offshore wind as the only viable solution capable of powering industry, transport and city centres, and the only renewable poised to challenge coal in Australia.
The university had no prior warning of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s offshore renewables zone consultation, which began on August 14, but once the news broke, Ty and the team recognised a need for independent, research-based information and set to work, publishing a list of offshore wind FAQs on the Blue Energy Futures website last week.
The FAQs cover everything from 'why offshore wind' to what happens at the end of the turbines’ life and aim to inform the many local residents who, Ty says, have “genuine concerns” about the zone.
“The purpose of them, first of all, is to get information out there to allow people to make their own informed decisions and make their own submissions,” he says.
“We’re not trying to tell people how to think, we’re trying to give them information to inform their thinking.
“Every item that’s there is researched. Every answer that is on there has a source going back to an academic paper, a published piece, a trusted factual basis to it (unlike a lot of what we’re seeing on social media at the moment).
“In terms of veracity, it’s traceable through the actual answers there. They are hyperlinked to the information behind the information that’s being portrayed.
“We’ve done about five months’ work in two and a half weeks to put that together.”
The Blue Futures team supports the development of offshore wind in the Illawarra, provided the developments are done to the highest environmental, social and cultural standards. It’s made a submission to the department (read it on the Blue Energy Futures Lab website).
Compiling the FAQs involved more than 30 researchers from across all university faculties, including social science, ecology, health, engineering and maritime law.
“We all banded together to put that together to try and get it out there,” Ty says. “In particular, before the public consultation process closed.”
The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is calling for feedback on a 1461sq/km zone off the Illawarra coast proposed for future offshore renewable energy projects. The initial cut-off was October 16, now extended to November 15. Go to consult.dcceew.gov.au/oei-
Federal Member for Cunningham Alison Byrnes has organised a ‘Town Hall’-style consultation session on Wednesday, October 11 from 4-8pm at the University of Wollongong. For more information on attending, including online registration, click here