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Hello, I am just looking for some guidance for the future as it would be a goal of mine to move to Australia in the future... ASAP. I am 21 years old I live in the UK and I am a fully Trained E,C & I (Electrical Control and Instrumentation) Technician with experience in Oil, Gas and Energy industry. I also have experience of Process operations on a Gas Turbine Power station. My main Quals are: NVQ Level 3 Instrumentation NEBOSH HND Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Would somebody be able to shed light on how I would stand in applying for jobs in Australia? Would I need further training if so what? What Jobs in Australia would I be suitable for? Would I get a sponsorship? Thank you for your help

Mining employment from Backpacker Trade News Australia: A report on the Australian Mining website has suggested that mining jobs are experiencing a boom in in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, with plenty of roles available. According to the report, engineers, electricians and safety professionals are expected to be in demand until later on this year.... .... However, when we spoke to Australian Mining a few weeks ago, they suggested that the industry was ‘slowing down’.

Hi, We are about to move to another unit in Sydney and we have the chance to choose a new electricity and gas provider. We are currently with Origin and we've had no major trouble. However, I've read plenty of scary reviews about them and wanted to know if I should try my luck with a better company. Any input is much appreciated.

Hey all Our new rental place has a Solar PV system which by the looks of it feeds into the grid. The Agent didn't know much about how it is set up. Yesterday I received a letter from Energex saying that we would receive 8 cents rebate per kilowatt hour for any excess electricity exported to the network. My question is does anyone have experience of how much of a saving this will put on the bills? There is no gas at the property and there are only two of us. Millie x

AUSTRALIANS put more household solar panel systems on their roofs than anyone else in the world last year, new data from the Clean Energy Regulator and the International Energy Agency show. The statistic astonished many in the solar industry, given Australia's small population compared with renewable energy market leaders such as European Union countries, China, Japan and the United States. About 392,500 new household solar systems were switched on last year. Australia still generates far less solar electricity than those countries, but the nation's preference for small, individual panels mounted on detached, owner-occupied suburban homes means a greater number of systems were actually installed. ''It took me by surprise that we were first, because Germany and Italy are so big,'' said Ric Brazzale, the president of the REC Agents Association, a body representing traders and creators of renewable energy certificates. ''Australian support for solar has had a lot of support at the residential level, and all political parties in the country have supported residential solar. Elsewhere in the world, most policy is geared towards much larger-scale commercial projects.'' Altogether, 785 megawatts of solar power was installed in Australia last year, virtually all in the form of small-scale panel systems on homes and businesses. This meant Australia just scraped in ahead of Japan and Germany, which deployed about 759 megawatts of small-scale solar power - although that represents only about 10 per cent of total German solar production. Similarly, in other big solar nations such as the US and China, government incentives emphasise big solar power plants, and only a small proportion of renewable energy comes from household rooftop panels. The end of generous state feed-in tariffs, such as the NSW Solar Bonus Scheme, had created a late rush to get panels on roofs, said Nigel Morris, the director of market analyst Solar Business Services. Mr Morris analysed the data, which was then scrutinised by others in the industry and found to be accurate, after cross-referencing with International Energy Agency figures for last year. ''In terms of total megawatts, Japan and Germany still beat us,'' he said. ''In Australia you have a combination of factors, but especially the renewable energy certificate system that's optimised for [rooftop solar] systems of 1.5 kilowatts. Our market is designed to favour small systems.'' Based on an average household size of 2.5 people, nearly 4 million Australians now live in a house or work in a business with solar panels on its roof. The amount of electricity generated by rooftop panels has increased almost tenfold between 2009 and 2011, and continues to grow despite rebates and tariffs being wound back. Altogether, renewable energy made up about 7 per cent of Australia's total electricity generation last year. Much of that came from hydroelectricity in the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the federal government's most recent Energy in Australia report shows. Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/energy-smart/australians-lead-in-fitting-solar-panels-on-homes-20120817-24dxd.html#ixzz24Ie6aqs0

hi i am an electrician with 20 years experience 3 of which are installing small scale wind turbines (10kw) and solar pv .i have no qualifications for the wind and solar energy bit, but i would love to continue this kind of work when we've emmigrated to oz. does anyone know whether or not you need seperate qualifications for renewable energy jobs and also what are the chances of finding work in this occupation? rob

Hi all just thought I would give you this info as I have found it VERY informative I emailed the Dept of Energy in WA ref obtaining a license when arriving they sent me this. Hi Lloyd Your choice if you wish to be assessed before you leave or if you wait until you are in Australia. VETASSESS will assess in your country of origin and TRA will assess if you are already in Australia. Once we have received your application and you have been assessed by us we will send you to do the Electrical Trade Licensing Course and when you have successfully completed the course you will be granted your Licence according to the endorsement you have bee assessed by either VETASSESS or TRA. If you have been assessed as an Electrical Mechanic and once you have been granted your Licence you can then apply to do the Electrical Contractors Training Program so that you may be a self employed electrician/contractor. You can not do this process until you have been granted a full electricians licence with no restrictions. Below is the link to the application form you will need once you have been assessed by either VETASSESS or TRA http://www.docep.wa.gov.au/EnergySaf...018%200710.pdf Cheers Robyn Nelson Senior Customer Service Officer - Licensing Office EnergySafety | Department of Commerce * PO Box 135 Cannington WA 6987 | Level 1 Mason Bird Building, 303 Sevenoaks Street, Cannington WA 6107 I then asked them to clarify exactly what the cert needs to read from VETASSES so I get an unrestricted license enabling me to go self employed, and got this back ; Hi Lloyd If you are assessed by TRA it needs to be Electrical Mechanic if you are assessed by VETASSESS it needs to read Offshore Technical Skills Record in relation to Units of Competency within the Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician Cheers Robyn Nelson Senior Customer Service Officer - Licensing Office EnergySafety | Department of Commerce * PO Box 135 Cannington WA 6987 | Level 1 Mason Bird Building, 303 Sevenoaks Street, Cannington WA 6107 so all those about look into licenses , I hope this helps I intend to go self employed after 12 months experience working there to get me up to speed with their ways of doing things, I know know what I need to get an unrestricted license. Hope this helps someone like it helped me :biggrin: happy days Lloyd

I was listening to a radio show yesterday about saving money on your heating bills. Now this was an ABC National program not one of your commercial stations. In the whole 20 minutes they did not mention insulation once. Endless chat about choosing the cheapest supplier and technical stuff like Reverse Cycle AC being more efficient than Fan heaters. BUT not ONE word about insulating your bloody home. I know they have had some problems with roof insulation but for ***** sake - Just insulate your home! In the UK (& Europe) we have been doing this for the last 30 years. You cant install single glazed windows its illegal. Only a jerk wouldn't have a halfway decent quantity of insulation in their roof! Its inbuilt into the national psyche. And what's more in Australia it pays you back twice. Not only does it keep the cold out in winter but the cool in during summer. Maybe they should quadruple the cost of energy that might make them think. Rant over!

Size 57-58cm, very nice top quality crash helmet. $100 ONO bargain

Hi All, Looking for people to asses small and medium businesses for energy efficiency in Sydney.You will be required to use a software that calculates energy consumption and advise clients on how to make savings on there energey bill and get government rebates for making changes to save on electricity consumption. You will require, Mature age, we are looking for people in the 30+ Good communication skills Have experience in using Microsoft Excel and geenral computer knowledge and own a computer. Own a car as there is travelling involved Sales skills is a bonus but not required Knowledge on electrical items is an advantage All training is provided. Please pm for more details

As a new starter to the immigration process we have a lots of questions and the whole process seems quite daunting. Our background is we are a married couple (both aged 37) with two boys under the age of four. We would like to emigrate from the UK to Victoria State. My wife is a part-time primary teacher and I am an energy manager. Our questions are: are teaching jobs still in demand in Australia? Are energy managers jobs easy to come by and becoming sought after like they are in the UK? Where is the best place to go to find energy manager jobs? What is the best option, to try and find a job and be sponsored or apply for a visa and then look for a job in our fields? Seek state sponsorship? We understand there is a points scoring system for visa applications, where can we find the scoring mechanism? If anyone can help guide us with our queries, we would really appreciate the help. Thanks in advance.

Hi all, My wife and I are making the move to Australia and are in the process of sorting all our details out. first step was to get my wife's skills tested. She is the main applicant and is a pharmacist. She has an exam with the Australian pharmacy council in December and will hopefully then have the skills verified which means applying in early Jan for the visa. We are both UK citizens, and are in our 20s. She's a pharmacist and I am a business ocnsultant for the energy sector. We have already pushed our departure to Australia back 6 months due to the difficulty and red tape with getting the skills assessed from the Australian Pharmacy council but are now scheduled to arrive in Oz in December 2010. This means that there is approximately 11-12 months bewteen applying to the DIAC and arriving in Sydney/Melbourne (undecided). My questions are: 1.) With the recent Spet 23rd news form the immigration minister, is this 2013 date for 175 visa granting realistic. On the current priority list we sit at 4 as we are CSL but do not have family, emplyer or state sponsorship. 2.) I am concerned that the visa will not be granted on time. Given that my wife's work is for a government body - NHS/Australian equivalent, how realistic is it to get an emplyer sponsorship so that we could go in as 457/121? 3.)I've heard that Australia has a lot of surplus junior pharmacists without work but is in need of senior pharmacists which fortunately works out well for us. Not sure how accurate this is though. Any information on difficulty in finding a job as a pharmacist? 4.) As mentioned above, we plan to arrive in Iz in December 2010. We will be travelling for some 3 months in Asia before hand. If necessary, will it be possible to get the 175 finalised at an embassy other than that of lodging, i.e. we will lodge the application with the DIAC in London, but could we present our passports to the DIAC/embassy in Bangkok for example? 5.) I've also heard that sites like seek.com.au etc, although very useful, only contain a low % of positions actually available. Does anyone have any further advice for health system and financial/energy sector roles? Finally let me say a big thank you to all posters past and future of this forum. I have certainly found it to be an exceptional information resource and it has very much become my first port of call for finding out something. My rationale for making thos post is that there seems to be a shortage of information for pharmacists on here hence thought that as it has the word 'pharmacist' in the title, it may be of use as an easy reference to future pharmacists looking to migrate, with the added benefit of being personalised to our situation. Please don't think we've been lazy and are just not willing to search out this info for ourselves. Thank in advance, regards.

Hi Just read this article on 'Perth NOW' online and i was wondering if currnet WA resisdence can tell me if the energy bill increases of 23% in 09 has been felt as much as this article is making out? Shock for households as power bills to surge $270 a year | PerthNow We move to Perth in the next 3weeks and seeing that there has been such an increase this year, and a planned 26% increase next year, it is a worry what with us going out with no jobs and starting a new ect ect. They are saying that the average family has had to find and extra $270 already to cover the increase, that will surely double with the 2010 planned 26% THATS MASSIVE! :wideeyed: Obviously you find it, you have to find it, but how do energy bills get paid in Aus, can you do monthly direct debits or do they have to be paid in one big hit? If so then a hit of over $400 in one month is nasty. :huh: Is this increase to be a yearly thing!?!?! Any advise or info most appreciated. Thanks

Been in Melbourne for 3 weeks now staying with OH's family. We have finally found a rental:jiggy:which we move into at the weekend. I now need to get the gas and electricity connected and don't know who will be the best/cheapest. Also, am I right in thinking that you have to pay a tariff to get gas and electricity supplied to your house?:unsure: Would appreciate anyones advice and guidence on who to use. Would also be interested in peoples experienece of phone companies- telstra, optus etc for a landline. Cheers Laura

Well the good old Government have got my vote again NOT!!! got a call from AE today and because we put our house on the market before the HIPS came into force, we now have to get a energy efficiency report done:arghh: if we haven't got one before the 1st Oct we are not able to continue marketing our house... i'm fed up to say the least if it's not one thing it's another... but on a lighter note i have a viewing tomorrow and the guy is from a housing association...don't know what to think about that but we'll see what happens Lisax

Scientists are working to convert sunlight to cheap electricity at South Dakota State University. Research scientists are working with new materials that can make devices used for converting sunlight to electricity cheaper and more efficient. Assistant professor Qiquan Qiao in SDSU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science said so-called organic photovoltaics, or OPVs, are less expensive to produce than traditional devices for harvesting solar energy. Qiao and his SDSU colleagues also are working on organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. The new technology is sometimes referred to as “molecular electronics” or “organic electronics” — organic because it relies on carbon-based polymers and molecules as semiconductors rather than inorganic semiconductors such as silicon. “Right now the challenge for photovoltaics is to make the technology less expensive,” Qiao said. “Therefore, the objective is find new materials and novel device structures for cost-effective photovoltaic devices. “The beauty of organic photovoltaics and organic LEDs is low cost and flexibility,” the researcher continued. “These devices can be fabricated by inexpensive, solution-based processing techniques similar to painting or printing." “The ease of production brings costs down, while the mechanical flexibility of the materials opens up a wide range of applications,” Qiao concluded. Organic photovoltaics and organic LEDs are made up of thin films of semiconducting organic compounds that can absorb photons of solar energy. Typically an organic polymer, or a long, flexible chain of carbon-based material, is used as a substrate on which semiconducting materials are applied as a solution using a technique similar to inkjet printing. “The research at SDSU is focused on new materials with variable band gaps,” Qiao said. “The band gap determines how much solar energy the photovoltaic device can absorb and convert into electricity.” Qiao explained that visible sunlight contains only about 50 percent of the total solar energy. That means the sun is giving off just as much non-visible energy as visible energy. “We’re working on synthesizing novel polymers with variable band gaps, including high, medium and low-band gap varieties, to absorb the full spectrum of sunlight. By this we can double the light harvesting or absorption,” Qiao said. SDSU’s scientists plan to use the variable band gap polymers to build multi-junction polymer solar cells or photovoltaics. These devices use multiple layers of polymer/fullerene films that are tuned to absorb different spectral regions of solar energy. Ideally, photons that are not absorbed by the first film layer pass through to be absorbed by the following layers. The devices can harvest photons from ultraviolet to visible to infrared in order to efficiently convert the full spectrum of solar energy to electricity. SDSU scientists also work with organic light-emitting diodes focusing on developing novel materials and devices for full color displays. “We are working to develop these new light-emitting and efficient, charge-transporting materials to improve the light-emitting efficiency of full color displays,” Qiao said. Currently, LED technology is used mainly for signage displays. But in the future, as OLEDs become less expensive and more efficient, they may be used for residential lighting, for example. The new technology will make it easy to insert lights into walls or ceilings. But instead of light bulbs, the lighting apparatus of the future may look more like a poster, Qiao said. Qiao and his colleagues are funded in part by SDSU’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program and by National Science Foundation and South Dakota EPSCoR, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. In addition Qiao is one of about 40 faculty members from SDSU, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the University of South Dakota who have come together to form Photo Active Nanoscale Systems (PANS). The primary purpose is developing photovoltaics, or devices that will directly convert light to electricity. Quantum Dot Recipe May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels (May 4, 2007) — Scientists have developed a new method for cost-effectively producing four-armed quantum dots that have previously been shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical ... > read more [/url] Energetic Nanoparticles Swing Sunlight Into Electricity (Feb. 22, 2008) — The electrons in nanoparticles of noble metal oscillate together apace with the frequency of the light. This phenomenon can be exploited to produce better and cheaper solar cells, scientists have ... > read more Technology Could Use Moon Dust To Capture Sun Power; University Of Houston Solar Cell Research Has Applications For Space Exploration, Clean Cars (Oct. 8, 2002) — New technologies designed to harness the power of the sun may hold the key to successful moon colonies, cheaper and lighter-weight satellites, and cleaner-burning, more efficient car ... > read more Nanowire Generates Its Own Electricity (Oct. 23, 2007) — Chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but ... > read more Think Solar Not Nuclear For The Energy Of The Future, Say Scientists (Mar. 6, 2006) — Solar rather than nuclear energy should be the UK government's priority in planning future energy production, according to scientists writing today in the journal Nature ... > read more :chatterbox:

The UK's biggest domestic supplier has heaped misery on households after hiking gas and electricity bills. British Gas, which has 15.9 million customers, is raising gas bills by 35% and electricity prices by 9%. Average dual fuel prices will jump 25%. The company blamed soaring wholesale energy prices for the move, which follows price increases from rival EDF Energy last Friday. The price hikes come into effect immediately and will add an extra £262.80 a year to the average dual fuel customer's bill, or 72p a day. British Gas managing director Phil Bentley said: "We very much regret that we have had to make this decision at a time when many household budgets are already under pressure. "The simple fact though is that we have entered an era of unprecedented high world energy prices." The company blamed increasing global demand, diminishing UK gas reserves and record oil prices for the decision. But it said standard rate customers will not be hit with any further prices rises this year, while 2.1 million of its fixed-rate customers will not pay any extra at all

With petrol crisis how is this effecting Australia? In the UK energy bills are going up at same rate as petrol. If oil hits the $150 a barrel which it will by xmas elec and gas in the uk shall be 50% higher than 2007. Average $3000 a year for gas and elec. Currently elec and gas is costing $200 month now and from september will be near $300 a month. How much is elec/gas in oz? is it effected by the oil price?

Hi all, I am looking to move to australia as an House Energy Ratings Assessor. I do a very similar job in the uk, Domestic Energy Assessor. Hopfully some kind sole out there will have some advice on where to look for infomation. Would it be aceptable to just send companies an email on the off chance or is that going one step too far. I have seen other threads on this site giving advice as to web sites that advertise job vacancies but I have yet to find any, vacancies that is. If there is a lack of opportunities then maybe we will have to rethink. Any advice would be greatly received. Thanks.:notworthy: :Randy-git:don't know what this is but I thought it looked funny??!!