Interests
Solar energy; semiconductors; photovoltaics; silicon solar cells; urban concentrators; energy policy & economics; pumped hydro energy storage.
Research
Professor Blakers’ primary interest is advanced silicon solar cells - increasing efficiency and reducing cost, including for thin film silicon solar cell technology concentrator solar cells, tandem solar cells and PV components and systems. He is also interested in sustainable energy policy, including detailed analysis of energy systems with high (50-100%) penetration by wind and photovoltaics with support from pumped hydro energy storage. He has extensive experience with basic and applied research, and led the teams that developed PERC and Sliver cell technologies. He also has interest in sustainable energy policy, and is engaged in detailed analysis of energy systems with high (50-100%) penetration by wind and photovoltaics with support from pumped hydro energy storage.
Professor Blakers’ research group is large, externally funded, experimentally-intensive, commercially-responsive, interdisciplinary, outreach-active, policy-engaged, and physics/materials-based.
Biography
Andrew Blakers is Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University. He was a Humboldt Fellow and has held Australian Research Council QEII and Senior Research Fellowships. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering, the Institute of Energy and the Institute of Physics. He is a Public Policy Fellow at ANU. He has published approximately 300 papers and patents.
Activities & Awards
- Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Australian Institute of Energy and the Royal Society of New South Wales
- Life Member of the International Solar Energy Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation
- ANU Node Director of the ARENA Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics
- Chair, International Advisory Panel, Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore
- World record efficient silicon solar cells: responsible for the design and fabrication of silicon solar cells with first reported efficiencies of 18% (1983), 19% (1984) 20% (1986) and 22% (1988).
- PERC silicon solar cells: Co-inventor and first author on the first papers. The cell design constitutes 90% of the global solar market and has achieved cumulative global module sales of $100 Billion
- Sliver solar cell co-inventor: the subject of a $240 million commercialisation effort by Transform Solar
For more details, please see this site.