Andrew Blakers AO FAA FTSE FRSN is a Professor of renewable energy engineering at the Australian National University. [1] He has contributed to several innovations in solar photovoltaic technology, including PERC solar cells. Blakers has secured many research grants and won several awards.
Blakers founded the solar research group at ANU in 1991. It comprises about 60 staff and students who work on silicon, perovskite and tandem solar cells.
PERC solar photovoltaic technology is used in about 80% of solar panels deployed around the globe. Cumulative PERC solar panel sales are about US$150 billion. PERC solar panels are mitigating about 3% of global emissions through displacement of coal generation. [2]
Sliver Cell photovoltaic technology uses one tenth of the silicon used in conventional solar panels. Blakers invented the technology with colleague Prof Klaus Weber and developed it with funding from energy supplier Origin Energy and the Australian Research Council.
Blakers and colleagues work on 100% renewable energy futures. [3] This entails hour-by-hour modelling over decades of supply of energy (mostly from solar and wind) and demand for energy. Sufficient solar, wind, storage and transmission is added to the model to ensure sufficient supply of energy at all times. The levelized cost of a balanced 100% renewable energy system (dollars per Megawatt-hour) can then be calculated. National energy systems have been modeled for Australia, [4] Japan, [5] ASEAN, [6] Bolivia, [7] Indonesia [8] and other countries.
Blakers and colleagues have produced global atlases showing millions of off-river (closed loop) pumped hydro energy storage sites around the world that can be used to support 100% renewable energy. [9]
Blakers won the Clunies Ross Technology Innovation Award of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2024
Blakers, Martin Green, Jianhua Zhao and Aihua Wang won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2023 for development of the PERC solar cell.
Blakers, Matt Stocks and Bin Lu won the 2018 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research for work on 100% renewable energy futures.
Blakers was 2012 state finalist for the Australian of the year award, in the Australian Capital Territory.
Blakers and Klaus Weber won the 2007 Australian Institute of Physics' Walsh Medal for their solar research work.
Blakers and colleagues won the 2005 Banksia Award for Environmental Leadership in Infrastructure & Services.
Blakers is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Australian Institute of Energy and the Royal Society of New South Wales. He is a life member of the International Solar Energy Society, the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2024 [10] and he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2025 Australia Day Honours. [11]
Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy production. A device that stores energy is generally called an accumulator or battery. Energy comes in multiple forms including radiation, chemical, gravitational potential, electrical potential, electricity, elevated temperature, latent heat and kinetic. Energy storage involves converting energy from forms that are difficult to store to more conveniently or economically storable forms.
Renewable energy is energy from renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind power, and hydropower. Bioenergy and geothermal power are also significant in some countries. Some also consider nuclear power a renewable power source, although this is controversial. Renewable energy installations can be large or small and are suited for both urban and rural areas. Renewable energy is often deployed together with further electrification. This has several benefits: electricity can move heat and vehicles efficiently and is clean at the point of consumption. Variable renewable energy sources are those that have a fluctuating nature, such as wind power and solar power. In contrast, controllable renewable energy sources include dammed hydroelectricity, bioenergy, or geothermal power.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing. A PSH system stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost surplus off-peak electric power is typically used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power.
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially used for electricity generation and as photosensors.
In the 19th century, it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current – the photoelectric effect. This discovery laid the foundation for solar cells. Solar cells have gone on to be used in many applications. They have historically been used in situations where electrical power from the grid was unavailable.
A solar cell, also known as a photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect. It is a form of photoelectric cell, a device whose electrical characteristics vary when it is exposed to light. Individual solar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as "solar panels". Almost all commercial PV cells consist of crystalline silicon, with a market share of 95%. Cadmium telluride thin-film solar cells account for the remainder. The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.
A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. These electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct current (DC) electricity, which can be used to power various devices or be stored in batteries. Solar panels are also known as solar cell panels, solar electric panels, or PV modules.
Martin Andrew Green is an Australian engineer and professor at the University of New South Wales who works on solar energy. He was awarded the 2021 Japan Prize for his achievements in the "Development of High-Efficiency Silicon Photovoltaic Devices". He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Progress in Photovoltaics.
Hybrid power are combinations between different technologies to produce power.
Renewable energy in Australia is based mainly on biomass, solar, wind, and hydro generation technologies. Over a third of all electricity generated in Australia is renewable energy, a proportion that is increasing in line with global trends, with a target to phase out coal power before 2040. In 2021 Australia overtook China in terms of renewable energy proportion, and as of 2024 has almost caught up with the European Union, but is still far behind Germany who overtook Australia in 2004. Wind and rooftop solar energy in particular have grown since 2010.
Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to convert light into an electric current. Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and solar tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight to a hot spot, often to drive a steam turbine.
A photovoltaic system, also called a PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity, a solar inverter to convert the output from direct to alternating current, as well as mounting, cabling, and other electrical accessories to set up a working system. Many utility-scale PV systems use tracking systems that follow the sun's daily path across the sky to generate more electricity than fixed-mounted systems.
100% renewable energy is the goal of the use renewable resources for all energy. 100% renewable energy for electricity, heating, cooling and transport is motivated by climate change, pollution and other environmental issues, as well as economic and energy security concerns. Shifting the total global primary energy supply to renewable sources requires a transition of the energy system, since most of today's energy is derived from non-renewable fossil fuels.
Photovoltaic thermal collectors, typically abbreviated as PVT collectors and also known as hybrid solar collectors, photovoltaic thermal solar collectors, PV/T collectors or solar cogeneration systems, are power generation technologies that convert solar radiation into usable thermal and electrical energy. PVT collectors combine photovoltaic solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, with a solar thermal collector, which transfers the otherwise unused waste heat from the PV module to a heat transfer fluid. By combining electricity and heat generation within the same component, these technologies can reach a higher overall efficiency than solar photovoltaic (PV) or solar thermal (T) alone.
Crystalline silicon or (c-Si) is the crystalline forms of silicon, either polycrystalline silicon, or monocrystalline silicon. Crystalline silicon is the dominant semiconducting material used in photovoltaic technology for the production of solar cells. These cells are assembled into solar panels as part of a photovoltaic system to generate solar power from sunlight.
Solar-cell efficiency is the portion of energy in the form of sunlight that can be converted via photovoltaics into electricity by the solar cell.
Photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering is an area of research, development, and demonstration in Australia. Two Australian Research Council Centres play a role.
Floating solar or floating photovoltaics (FPV), sometimes called floatovoltaics, are solar panels mounted on a structure that floats. The structures that hold the solar panels usually consist of plastic buoys and cables. They are then placed on a body of water. Typically, these bodies of water are reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds.
This timeline of sustainable energy research from 2020 to the present documents research and development in renewable energy, solar energy, and nuclear energy, particularly regarding energy production that is sustainable within the Earth system.
Renate Egan is an Australian academic who is the executive director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, a centre for collaboration on photovoltaics research led by University of New South Wales. She is Deputy Head of School for Engagement in the School of Solar PV and Renewable Energy Engineering, at UNSW, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
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