Dr Ali Arefi received a BSc (Honours), MSc, and PhD all in electrical engineering in 1999, 2001, and 2011, respectively. He has been a lecturer and Research Fellow in Queensland University of Technology (QUT) since 2012. During this time, he has developed an automated tool for sustainable investment strategy in electric distribution networks over large areas and long planning horizons for Energy Queensland Limited. He is a chief investigator in the awarded Discovery Project titled “Transition to Customer Response Driven Networks”, which is funded $390k by Australian Research Council (ARC) in 2015 and ARENA project titled “Distributed Energy Resources Trials in Carnarvon”, 2017. He has more than six years’ experiences with electric distribution industry. He has been the consultant for 5 industry-funded research projects including evaluations of distributed generations and microgrids. He has also carried out energy audits and power quality analysis for more than 30 factories and electric distribution networks. Moreover, he has delivered many talks for industries in the field of energy efficiency and power quality.

Dr Arefi's expertise is mainly in the fields of:

 ‘Electric distribution network’ including microgrids, smart grids, sustainable and resilient planning, state Estimation, power quality, electric loss reduction, and ‘Energy Efficiency’ including renewable integration, zero emission technologies, and motor drives.