As Director of the Monash Grid Innovation Huband Associate Professor at Monash’s Faculty of Information Technology, Ariel leads Monash's Digital Energy initiatives. He brings together researchers from across disciplines such as AI and Electrical Engineering to help integrate new and energy technologies into the system. Ariel is also feputy Director of the Monash Energy Materials and Systems Institute(MEMSI), whose mission is to bring together Monash researchers together to help tack grand challenges in the energy and climate space together with Industry and Government.

Ariel is an energy markets specialist with more than 20 years’ experience across most aspects of the electricity supply chain, incorporating modelling of deregulated power markets and generation investment planning, network regulation analysis, and commercial retail portfolio energy trading and risk management (ETRM). 

Internationally, Ariel led the Australia Indonesia Centre Energy Clusterdirecting a $2.8M research program in Microgrids and Energy System transition to tackle the challenge of integrating distributed storage and renewables into new system planning and investment. He has recently led a project in collaboration with Indonesian and European NGO’s showing that energy efficiency and a shift to renewables can cost Indonesia no more than their current coal based plans while reaching 50% renewables by 2030 (https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/publications/a-roadmap-for-indonesias-power-sector/).

Ariel’s recent research in Energy sector focuses on development of faster optimisation-based decision support tools for operation and planning of large-scale energy systems as well as using cloud computing to manage the explosive complexity in forecasting costs and investments for integrated system planning.

Ariel has been an architect of the 6 mil. Monash Grid Innovation Hub, and is lead researcher in the 3 mil. Monash’s Smart Energy Citysupported by Australian Renewable Energy Agency. The Microgrid located at Monash’s Clayton campus is being purposefully built to demonstrate how a 100% renewable electricity system can operate reliably, and the value it can provide to customers and the broader energy network. The currently established infrastructure includes 2MW of solar panels, 20 buildings (mechanical load shedding), electric vehicle charging stations and 1 MWh of energy storage. All components of the infrastructure will act as independent competitive entities in the Monash Transactive Energy Market.

Ariel holds a PhD in Quantum Physics from the University of Queensland and a Masters in Physics from Auckland University.

Dr Ariel Liebman has experience as the Lecturer for the following units in the Faculty of IT:

• FIT2017 Computer models for business decision making
• FIT5077 e-Business application and development
• FIT5141 Advanced topics in information technology