The people
Team
Headquartered in South Australia, powered by a distributed national team of energy industry professionals.
Simon Hackett — Founder
Simon’s path to Energy Autopilot runs through three decades of building things ahead of their time — and each chapter turns out to be a rehearsal for this one.
The internet chapter. Fresh out of the University of Adelaide, Simon was part of the team that created AARNet — the first emergence of the internet in Australia — and, in 1990, co-created the world’s first Internet Toaster, arguably the first-ever IoT device. In 1991 he founded Internode , growing it into one of Australia’s largest privately held broadband companies — hundreds of staff, a quarter-million services, and a reputation built on network quality and customer service — before selling it to iiNet in 2011. Along the way: a seat on the NBN Co board and the Charles Todd Medal for contributions to Australian telecommunications.
The electric vehicle chapter. Simon became Australia’s foremost early EV adopter the hard way: in 2009 he privately imported the country’s first Tesla Roadster, then drove it from Darwin to Adelaide to prove a production EV could cross the continent — including 501 km through the desert on a single charge , a world distance record for production electric cars at the time. His family took delivery of the first two right-hand-drive Tesla Model S cars in Australia.
The battery chapter. Then came more than a decade of immersion in battery technology as an investor and innovator — including designing battery management systems through his involvement with flow-battery maker Redflow, and building a substantial renewable energy deployment at The Vale , in Tasmania. He’s also an investor in the Fully Charged Show and its worldwide Everything Electric events.
This chapter. Energy Autopilot is where the three threads meet — and a move up the stack. Internode taught him how to run distributed infrastructure: intelligent central coordination working with capable local equipment, which is exactly the FMS-and-Servo architecture. The EV and battery years taught him the physical layer of home energy, hands-on. Now he’s architecting the layer above: turning homes and offices into efficient, self-managing power plants.
More about Simon at simonhackett.com .