Call for Abstracts is open from 11 July 2025
We encourage both seasoned speakers and first time presenters to submit an abstract!
Benefits of Presenting at DTEC
- Meet with peers and industry experts
- Learn from others’ experiences
- Contribute to the growing industry knowledge base
- Benefit from having technical papers peer reviewed
- Keep up to date with recent advances in standards and best practice
- Connect with suppliers and potential business partners
- Earn CPD points for your professional development
Key Dates
| Call for abstracts open | 11 Jul 2025 |
| Final date for abstract submission | 5 Sep 2025 |
| Notification of acceptance of abstract | 3 Oct 2025 |
| Final date for receipt of papers | 23 Jan 2026 |
| Notification of acceptance of papers | 20 Mar 2026 |
| Final date for submission of presentation and revised paper | 17 April 2026 |
| Conference date | 19–21 May 2026 |
Topic Categories
We invite submissions for papers and presentations that provide insight on experiences such as addressing technically complex installations or designs, applying tools and methods to resolve real-world challenges, incidents of broader relevance including equipment failures or shock events, advancements in research, development of new tools or materials, or the introduction of updated policies and standards.
Particular areas of interest include
Compliance Analysis
- Standards development – present & future
- Best practice – relevance of standards & regulations
- Installations with multiple earths
- Special installations or circumstances
- Application of Risk
- Coordinating between standards
- Consequences of electric shock to humans and animals
Protection
- Earth fault protection schemes
- Earth fault detection
- Coordination with touch and step requirements
- Current sensor technologies
- Recorded fault events
Construction
- Sizing conductors
- Parasitic & stray currents
- Interference
- Corrosion
- Equipotential grids
- Control of static
Industries
- Rail
- Utilities
- Mining
- Tunnelling
- Renewables
Lightning
- Shielding Design
- Down conductor installation and termination
- Grid design
- Bonding arrangements
- Interference with secondary systems
- Probabilistic design
- Transient earth potential rise
- Damage mitigation
Risk
- ALARP vs SFAIRP
- Risk mitigation
- Cost vs risk
- Probabilistic design
- Coincidence – to measure or to estimate
- Public or personally imposed risk
- Modelling techniques
- Mapping of legislative requirements
- Earth return response
- Mutual effects
- Reliance on earth system interconnections
- Earth potential rise
Interference
- Telecommunications
- Conveyors
- Rail
- Pipelines
- Electrolysis
- Mining supplies
Testing
- Soil resistivity
- Earth loop impedance
- Grid resistance
- Hazard assessment
- Correlation with design
- Procedures – consistency, efficiency and accuracy
- Equipment
- Earth continuity
- Case studies
- Identification of anomalies
- Fortuitous connections
- Incident investigations
Installations
- High voltage installations
- Low voltage installations
- Augmentation of buried grids
- Renewables
- Embedded generation
- Geotechnical issues
- Power station and large industrial complexes
- Underground and open cut mines
- Marine & offshore
- Mobile plant
- Rail networks
- Project coordination
- Hazardous areas
- Safe work procedures
Electrolysis & Infrastructure Protection
- Electrolysis management
- Cathodic protection
- Corrosion protection
Abstract Requirements
Please ensure you have read the following requirements before submitting your abstract.
Abstracts are to
- Be received by no later than 5th September 2025.
- Contain no more than 400 words.
- Be submitted as a single page PDF file.
- Contain text only; graphics, pictures or graphs should not be submitted.
- Have permission of all authors for submission.
- Include a list of keywords for papers.
General Policies and Requirements
- All authors must read and accept the copyright license agreement contained in the speaker’s kit.
- Peer review of full manuscripts will take place. Papers submitted after the cutoff date cannot be peer-reviewed.
- Submission acknowledges consent to publication of your abstract in the conference program book.
- All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings.
- The presenting author will be required to register for the conference and submit a full paper to ensure their presentation is included in the final program. Presenters who have not registered by the deadline date time will be removed from the program.
- All papers must be original work. A paper intended for peer review should not be submitted if the work is to be published or presented at a major national or international meeting before the Down to Earth Conference.
- All peer-reviewed papers must be submitted to submissions@dtec.org.au
- A paper must contain sufficient information so that it will be a complete report independent of presentation if published. The paper should not contain statements alluding to results or conclusions that are not presented within the paper.
- All papers must be prepared according to the template provided in the speaker’s kit. Abstracts and papers will only be accepted and published if submitted using the correct format in the supplied template.
- There is no limit to the number of papers that an individual may submit but the technical committee reserves the right to limit the oral presentations to one per person.
- The DTEC Committee will not be held responsible for paper submissions not received or for submission errors caused by unforeseen events.
Submit your abstract
Please contact submissions@dtec.org.au if you have any questions regarding the submission process or would like to discuss the conference topics.
We look forward to receiving your abstract and seeing you in Newcastle.