Biography

Andrew Blakers (AO FAA FTSE FRSN) 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 has published approximately 300 papers and patents. Current research and publications are listed here. 

Research

Prof Blakers engages in analysis of 100% renewable energy systems based on wind and solar photovoltaics supported by storage for which he was joint winner of the 2018 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research. He and his team developed a global atlas of a million off-river pumped hydro energy storage sites which is highly influential in the renewable energy storage industry, with projects stemming from the atlas worth tens of billions of dollars.

Interests

Activities and awards

• Officer of the Order of Australia
• Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering and the Royal Society of NSW.
• Winner of the 2024 Clunies Ross Technology Innovation Award.
• Joint winner of the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize (the top global engineering prize) for PERC solar cell technology. PERC has cumulative panel sales of US$180 billion, and is mitigating 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions through displacement of coal.
• Life Member of the International Solar Energy Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation
• Chair, International Advisory Panel, Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore
• 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.