Advisory Panel

Dr Ebert has managed a number of products from research to commercialisation, including solar, wind and bioenergy projects operating on commercial utility systems. He has provided input into a range of renewable energy and related projects in and outside Australia, including technical, management, planning, construction, operation and policy.

Dr Ebert has expertise in remote and regional renewable energy supply, responsible for development, design, commissioning and operation of six utility scale off-grid power systems in Australia. His renewable energy technology expertise is in the areas of solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind and enabling technologies such as storage, as well as the operation of these within energy markets and electricity networks.

Geoff is a mechanical engineer, and has specialised in energy efficiency since 1985.

He is the founder and MD of Genesis Now (1991), which has completed over 2,500 energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in most industry sectors. He has won industry awards including national energy efficiency champion, and is recognised as a leader and innovator in energy efficiency.

Geoff also co-founded six clean-tech companies, is an early stage investor in renewable energy companies, and is an active member of the Melbourne Angel Investor group, and a member of the investment screening team, specialising in clean-tech and start-ups.

Kylie Catchpole is Professor in the Research School of Engineering at the Australian National University.  She has over 100 scientific publications, with a focus on using new materials and nanotechnology to improve solar cells.  Her work on plasmonic solar cells was named as one of the top 10 emerging technologies in 2010 by MIT Technology Review, and in 2013 she was awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. In 2015 she was awarded the John Booker Medal for Engineering Science from the Australian Academy of Science.

Mr Cawley has technical energy experience from well or mine, through processing and transmission, to generation, with an extensive knowledge of energy use in the resources and industrial sectors.

He also has a strong exposure to renewables including the design and construction of a pilot biodiesel plant, detailed peer review of a solar flagship CST plant and multiple analyses of renewable options in the industrial and resources sectors.

Mr Cawley’s commercial experience includes the purchase and re-development of a gas turbine cogen plant, founding and leading a specialised energy efficiency engineering business for 13 years and recently, the successful founding and funding of a start-up with an efficiency focus. Mr Cawley’s capabilities in the emerging energy sector are underlined by his election to the well-contested board of the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia three times.

Mr Cawley also has significant firsthand experience of innovation within the energy sector, with several new technologies and solutions delivered by his company as well as the new start-up.

Craig has responsibility for Energy Queensland's Strategy, Portfolio and Innovation. In this
role, he is accountable for business strategy, innovation, risk and compliance, regulation and
pricing, as well as customer and stakeholder engagement across the portfolio.

Craig has over 20 years’ experience in the electricity and gas industry in Australia, Asia and
the USA. Before joining Energy Queensland, Craig held a number of senior management
roles in the energy sector. Most recently he was responsible for AECOM’s Power business
line in Australia which included providing business strategy, group leadership and support to
its key transmission & distribution, power generation, industrial and government energy
sector clients. This involved providing companies with advice on strategy, policy, regulatory
compliance, due diligence, project development, technical design and construction delivery.

Stephen Drew has 37 years of practical chemical engineering experience in the renewable energy sector. Stephen helped to pioneer pinch analysis and process integration to make energy savings, predominantly on large dairy sites in New Zealand, Australia and in the United States. For most of his career, he has worked in senior roles in New Zealand’s renewable electricity industry. He has demonstrated the value in using electro-technologies in industrial applications, provided specialist services to distribution networks and more recently built a 200 MW portfolio in instantaneous reserves for a demand response aggregator. His project teams have been recognised for their innovation in the use of a novel thermal energy storage and the aggregation of very fast interruptible loads. He has participated on a New Zealand Advisory Group considering new wholesale market design, contributed to the Smart Grid Forum and is a member of the global Energy Centre for IChemE. He is an enthusiastic owner of one of the first Electric Vehicles (EV) in Wellington.

Peter is a Director and co-founder of Seed Advisory having established it in 2008.  Peter has over 23 years’ experience including 18 years in the energy sector.  His work focus within the energy industry has included advisory and direct energy retail and wholesale experience in executive management positions at EnergyAustralia, AGL, Pulse Energy, United Energy and IKON Energy.

Peter’s experience in the energy industry covers risk management, policy and regulatory development, retail marketing, strategy, wholesale trading, analysis and corporate development.  He has worked with start up, small, medium and large companies covering the entire energy value chain including corporate consumers, retailers, networks, wholesale market participants, market operators, regulators, governments and investors.  He has a detailed understanding of the Australian energy and renewable energy sectors covering the National Electricity Market, the Northern Territory Market and the West Australian market.  Peter is also an actuary with strong quantitative and risk management skills.

Dr Renate Egan is Associate Professor at University of New South Wales, where she leads the UNSW activity in the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, her key area of research is techno-economic analysis (or manufacturing costing). 

Renate’s 25 year career spans industry, university and not for profits. She has managed technology development in Australia and Germany and led industrial research projects with China. Renate is also a Co-Founder at successful start-up, Solar Analytics and is Chair of the Australian PV Institute. 

Mr Frearson has significant expertise in developing and commercialising renewable energy technologies. His experience includes prefeasibility through to construction management of renewable energy generation projects.

Notably he was involved in the first MW scale PV plant in Australia. He has previously worked to develop innovative approaches to automation and manufacturing during his seven years at Ford.

Mr Frearson has expertise in project finance assessment, off grid and edge of grid energy projects and markets with technical expertise in solar PV, solar thermal and enabling technologies.

Dr Xiaojing Hao is UNSW Scientia Fellow (1st round), ARC DECRA, and Senior Lecturer of School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineer at UNSW.  She was one of the 1st round ARENA Research Fellows. Her research interests include low-cost high-efficiency thin film solar cells (chalcogenide solar cells, perovskite solar cells), tandem solar cells, chalcogenide materials for solar fuel production, BIPV and portable power sources.

Dr Hao initiated and now leads a strong team of students/postdoctoral researchers in the above areas. She led the team achieving 4 certified world record in pure sulphide kesterite (CZTS) solar cells so far, establishing internationally forefront position for the CZTS solar cells research. She has extensive project management experience through her role as lead CI or CI on several ARC and ARENA grants and has published 80 peer-reviewed journal papers. Dr Hao was selected as the “20 rising stars who will change our world” at UNSW.

Dr. Anita Ho-Baillie is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. Her research interests in the field of Photovoltaics including design, characterization, modelling and fabrication of Si solar cells, novel thin film materials and tandem solar cells. She also has expertise and experience in Photovoltaic manufacturing costing and manufacture flow modelling, Photovoltaic system sizing and interconnection modelling, hybrid marine construction including energy management.

She currently leads the perovskite solar cell research group at UNSW which achieved world record energy conversion efficiencies for the largest perovskite solar cells independently certified in 2016.

Dr Huddlestone-Holmes is a geologist in CSIRO’s Energy Flagship. He has 20 years of experience as a geologist in the resources and research sector including working within industry, academia and the CSIRO. He led CSIRO’s geothermal energy research program from 2009 to 2014, working with researchers and the geothermal industry to identify research priorities and establish research programs to support the development of geothermal energy technologies and methods.

Dr Huddlestone-Holmes’ current research focuses on geological characterisation of geological resources including gas, coal and geothermal and understanding the implications of these characteristics on resource extraction.

Katherine is the leading financial advisor in the renewable energy sector in Australia. Katherine is an Advisory Panel Member for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, reviewing all renewable energy projects seeking grant funding. She has also been appointed to the Northern Territory Government Renewable Energy Expert Panel. Katherine has a broad range of transaction experience in corporate finance and has advised on mergers, divestments and acquisitions, debt and equity financing of transactions, specifically in the energy and infrastructure sector. In recent years Katherine has arranged over $20 billion of debt and $5 billion of equity financing.

Ms Larsen has over 18 years’ experience in the Energy industry across a wide variety of roles. She has strong fuels, petrochemicals and gas supply chain experience, with a deep commercial knowledge of the Australian and regional fuels industry.  She has a comprehensive business skill set with strong commercial and business acumen developed through Strategy, Supply, Trading, Oil refining and Integrated Business Planning roles.

Ms Larsen has deep insights into the fuel supply chain economics and understands the challenges faced by the biofuels industry in Australia.

Alison Lennon is an Assoc. Professor in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering and UNSW. She holds PhDs in Biophysical NMR (University of Sydney, 1995) and Photovoltaic Engineering (UNSW, 2010). Prior to her employment at UNSW in 2010, she was employed as a research scientist and research manager at Canon Information Systems Research Australia, where she was involved is a range of research projects which included device simulations and materials research.

Since 2010 Alison has been involved in the convening and teaching of core 3rd year Photovoltaic Engineering courses in the areas of device physics, fabrication and characterisation and photovoltaic manufacturing. She has contributed to educational program reviews, the accreditation of the UNSW Photovoltaic and Solar Energy and Renewable Energy undergraduate Bachelor of Engineering programs with Engineers Australia and the development of online teaching resources.

Dr Lovegrove is the Head – Solar Thermal for the UK based renewable energy consulting company ITPower. He has 28 years of experience in Solar Thermal Energy combined with 15 years of teaching experience in Energy Systems and Systems Engineering.

He was previously the leader of the Solar Thermal Group at the Australian National University. In that role he was the lead inventor and team leader of the 500m2 Generation II Big Dish solar concentrator, recognized with a Light Weight Structures Association of Australia, 2009 design award.

Dr Lovegrove has authored or co-authored more than 160 publications including 2 patents and 7 books, chapters and major public reports. He was the primary editor of the 2012 book “Concentrating Solar Power Technology” by Woodhead publishing UK. In 2012, he was a Member of the Australian Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, Expert Working Group on Climate Energy and Water Links.

Mike McGehee is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy.  His research interests are developing new materials for smart windows and solar cells.  He has taught courses on nanotechnology, nanocharacterization, organic semiconductors, polymer science and solar cells. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and his PhD degree in Materials Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he did research on polymer lasers in the lab of Nobel Laureate Alan Heeger.  He won the 2007 Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

Robert is an experienced economist, and commercial and regulatory advisor with expertise in regulatory policy and practice in Australia’s electricity and gas sectors.  He is expert in energy grid access regulation, having designed rules and incentive schemes, managed price reviews, and advised on regulatory, contestability and tariff strategy.  He has a master of regulatory economics from Australian National University.

Over the past 15 years Robert has applied his knowledge of policy, regulation and commercial strategy to advise clients across Australia and Asia.  He is recognised for his considered approach to solving commercial and policy problems, adapting and applying regulatory regimes, and engaging customers and stakeholders in regulatory decisions.  In recent years, he has applied himself to the regulatory and pricing reforms needed to facilitate network transformation, and to helping clients assess commercialisation of distributed energy services and embedded multi-utility solutions.

Professor Meredith is the Sêr Cymru Research Chair in Sustainable Advanced Materials at Swansea University Department of Physics in the United Kingdom. He is also a visiting Professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, and formerly an Australian Research Council Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award Fellow. He was educated in the UK at Swansea, Heriot-Watt and Cambridge Universities, and also spent six years as a senior scientist at Proctor and Gamble.

His current research involves the development of new sustainable high-tech materials for applications such as optoelectronics and bioelectronics. Professor Meredith has published >200 papers and 28 patents, and is co-founder of several start-up companies including XeroCoat and Brisbane Materials Technology. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Premier of Queensland’s Sustainability Award (2013) and is widely recognised for his contributions to innovation and the promotion of renewable energy. He serves on several advisory bodies and boards including the Queensland Renewable Energy Target Public Enquiry Expert Panel.

Dr. Damion Milliken is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Dyesol Limited, a leading ASX listed Australian SME industrialising the innovative technology of perovskite solar cells (PSC).  Prior to this, Dr. Milliken provided technical leadership for Dyesol in the UK on pilot-scale development of roll-to-roll production of the 3rd-generation DSC technology in partnership with Tata Steel.

With over a decade of experience in industrialising emerging PV technology, Dr. Milliken is keenly aware of the challenges, risks, and potential benefits involved in pursuing commercial exploitation of new energy technology, and of the R&D requirements for such endeavours to succeed.  His experience extends to many complex international and regional R&D collaborations, within Australia and in Europe, Asia and the US, with both private-private and public-private funding models.
Dr. Milliken’s earlier industrial R&D work was for Kyocera in relation to mass production of multi-layer ceramic capacitors, and for the CSIRO on nano-materials.  He has also worked in academia at the University of Leeds and in Government, both at the tertiary educational level and Federal Departmental level.  He holds a PhD in Materials Engineering, with his academic work focussed on electro-ceramics.

Emeritus Professor Morrison has more than 35 years’ experience with the design and commercialisation of solar thermal energy systems. Professor Morrison established the solar thermal energy department at the University of New South Wales and was Director of Solar Thermal Energy Research at UNSW until 2005.

After leaving UNSW he has been involved in the design and commercialisation of large scale solar thermal power systems.

He was involved with the design and construction of the first large scale high temperature solar thermal energy system connected to a conventional power station; at Liddell in the Hunter Valley NSW. He has been Australian representative on the International Standards Organisation and International Energy Agency solar thermal energy committees.

Professor Morrison has extensive design expertise in the area of industrial thermal energy systems as well as modelling and simulation of solar thermal energy processes. In addition, he has extensive commercial development experience in enabling high temperature solar thermal energy projects.

John O’Brien is the founder of Australian CleanTech, a research and advisory firm that assists companies, investors and governments to drive cleantech industry growth in Australia and across Asia. With engineering degrees from Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin and an MBA from Adelaide University, John has specialised in building connections between people, technology, finance and government to create better ways of living that are also financially viable. John is also an experienced director having served on the boards of public, private and not-for-profit companies.

Australian CleanTech manages the Australian CleanTech Cluster, the Australian CleanTech Network and the Australian Technologies Competition that finds and mentors Australia’s best emerging technology companies.
In 2015, John launched the global VISIONS 2100 Project at the COP21 Conference in Paris. The project seeks to recalibrate environmental communications to engage more effectively with the wider community.

John has worked for over 35 years as a professional engineer and businessman holding executive‐ level roles in both the public and private sector for utilities and advisory firms. John’s specific roles have included participation in Australian and international energy market, projects and operations.

Over the last 15 years John has founded a number of highly successful consulting businesses providing strategic advice on both energy market and electricity infrastructure to major utility and resources companies. CopperString, the largest single electricity network project in Australia, was founded by John and was designed to open up the sustainable resources corridor between Townsville and Mt Isa.

John also has investments in a number of significant energy and resources related project developments, and has played an active role in the economic development planning for northern Queensland. John travels extensively to provide strategic advice, business input and thought leadership across Australia and internationally.

Phil O’Neil is a Senior Associate in New Energy for the WorleyParsons advisory business, Advisian.  New Energy covers renewable and de-centralised energy, hybrids and new disruptive technologies such as energy storage, as well as aspects of associated policy, regulation and commercial models.  This business focusses particularly on the commercial and technical components of project and product development, delivery and operations, and covers a large range of technologies and clients, including utilities, investors, private interests and Governments.

Phil has particular strength in energy productivity, having worked with industrial customers to improve efficiency for more than 12 years.  During this time he has helped a number of the largest energy users in Australia and has also undertaken projects in many other countries including New Zealand, China, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE.

Phil has also worked extensively on techno-economic assessments and transport fuels, including recent studies to consider the cost of electricity generation and liquid fuels production in Australia as well as the Green Hydrogen economy in South Australia and alternative fuels in Kuwait.

Professor Strezov is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University. He holds a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Newcastle.

He has 20 years of experience in research and development of advanced energy technologies, specialising in biomass research and industrial sustainability science.

He serves as a consultant for the Australian mining and energy resource industries in the fields of applied clean energy, biomass technology, biofuel production, waste to energy conversion and industrial ecology. Professor Strezov is a Fellow of Engineers Australia.

Prof. Dr. Koen Vandewal obtained his PhD in Physics at Hasselt University (Belgium) in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jean V. Manca, working on new types of solar cells using organic materials. After that, he has been working for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Linköping University in Sweden and another two years at Stanford University in the US.

In 2014, he was appointed as Endowed Professor at the Technische Universitaet (TU) Dresden in Germany, where his is leading a research group which aims to solve fundamental questions in the field of organic and molecular electronics with particular emphasis on emerging organic based photovoltaic technologies. His seminal work in the field has resulted in more than 90 research papers in interdisciplinary journals and a multitude of invited talks at international conferences.

Mr Walter is a mechanical engineer with 20 years’ experience in the energy advisory sector incorporating a range of technical and commercial projects in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, South America, Africa and Europe. His primary focus is renewable energy and his experience includes site identification, development staging and strategy, resource and energy analysis, procurement, contracting, and finance due diligence for wind, solar and hydro projects.

Mr Walter is based in Aurecon’s Wellington office and is Renewable Energy Leader for Aurecon. Prior to joining Aurecon, he worked for PB Power in Wellington and Brisbane from 1995 to 2000, and for Mott MacDonald in Brighton and Glasgow from 2000 to 2005.

Dr Trystan Watson is Associate Professor and group leader of photovoltaics at the SPECIFIC Innovation and knowledge centre, based at Swansea University. SPECIFICs aim is to turn buildings into powerstations using functional coatings that capture, store and release energy.

Trystan started his academic career with a Chemistry degree at Swansea University before transferring in 2001 to the College of Engineering to carry out a Doctorate in Steel Technology. In 2005 Trystan then moved to Corus Strip Products (now Tata Steel) as a product development engineer in new steel products.  In 2007 Trystan returned to academia to take up a post-doctoral research position on the development of dye-sensitized solar cells on metal substrates. In 2011 Trystan became the lead in the photovoltaics scale-up activity at SPECIFIC growing the group to over 15 in 4 years publishing over 70 papers during this period.  His current research area is thin film printed PV in particular perovskite with a specialism in developing new technologies for the manufacture of these devices including deposition and curing processes.

Dr Watt is the Head of Energy Policy and PV for renewable energy engineering company ITP Renewables, and part-time Senior Lecturer, School of PV and Renewable Energy Engineering, UNSW Australia.

For the last 10 years she has been Chair of the Australian PV Institute (APVI) and the Australian representative on the IEA PV Power Systems Program (PVPS). She is currently the PVPS Alternate representative and a member of the Solar Flagship Education Infrastructure Fund Strategic Advisory Board.

Past appointments include Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society, Director of the Policy Group for the Australian CRC for Renewable Energy and a member of the Australian Solar Institute Technical Advisory Committee.

Dr Watt has extensive experience in renewable energy technology, policy, education and deployment and has worked collaboratively with stakeholders from industry, government, academia and the community.

Dr White leads the “Energy for Buildings” Stream in CSIRO and is a Program Leader in the Low-Carbon-Living Cooperative Research Centre. He chairs the AIRAH Solar Cooling Special Technical Group, the ASBEC Sustainable Housing Task Group, and is a subtask leader in the International Energy Agency Task48 “Quality Assurance and Support Measures for Solar Cooling”.

He has played a lead role in a number of award winning solar cooling showcase installations, and in the world first AS5389 Technical Standard for Solar Heating and Cooling. He has significant technology commercialization experience, including lead roles in three start-up companies. He also oversees the NatHERS software tools that underpin current house energy efficiency regulation.

Dr Wilson is a Solar Energy Specialist with over 17 years research experience he is Research Group Leader for Solar Energy Systems and Principal Research Scientist for Next Generation Photovoltaics in CSIRO Energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), the 2010 Winner, QUT Faculty of Science and Technology, Outstanding Young Alumni of the Year and the 2015 CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive Julius Career Awardee in Energy. The Solar Research Group is the largest solar research effort within CSIRO consisting of over 50 group members / 34 full-time engineers and scientists bringing together a multi-disciplinary research group of mechanical and software engineers, optical and device physicists, material and physical chemists, chemical process and electrical engineers. Dr Wilson is recognised for materials research into thin-film photovoltaics, most notably mesoscopic solar cells including the dye-sensitised solar cell (DSSC) and Perovskite thin-film PV.

Dr Alex Wonhas has recently joined Aurecon, a global engineering firm, as its Global Managing Director for Energy, Resources and Manufacturing. Alex brings deep strategic and innovation expertise in the energy and resources sectors in Australia and globally. Prior to Aurecon, Alex was Executive Director for Environment, Energy & Resources at CSIRO. At CSIRO, Alex has initiated the Future Grid Forum and the Network Transformation Roadmap together with the Energy Networks Association (ENA). Both processes used deep stakeholder engagement across the whole Australian power sector grounded in technical and economic realities to shape the future of network businesses in Australia. Alex has also overseen the development and commercialisation of a number of transformative energy technologies ranging from grid-scale battery storage (eg http://www.ecoult.com ) to digital energy optimisation approaches (eg https://buildingiq.com; ASX:BIQ). Alex is a sought after adviser to government on energy matters. For example, Alex was a key member of federal government’s expert panel of the 2012 and 2015 Energy White Papers and he was appointed to the Low Emissions Technology Roundtable, convened by the Minerals Council of Australia. Prior to CSIRO, Alex was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he led numerous projects for major Australian and international energy and resource companies. He is also one of the co-authors of McKinsey’s Australian Carbon Abatement Cost Curve.

Dr Wright has over 40 years’ research and industrial experience in the development, commercialisation and implementation of energy and minerals technologies.  He was previously the Chief of CSIRO Energy Technology, and Director of the CSIRO Flagship program, Energy Transformed.

Dr Wright has served on a wide range of renewable energy boards and committees, including the Renewable Energy Development Program (REDP), the interim Board of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy (ACRE) the Victorian Government’s New Energy Jobs Fund Expert Panel and several International Energy Agency (IEA) committees and Implementing Agreements.

In 2016 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to science and engineering, particularly to renewable energy technology, and to professional organisations.

Michael has an extensive utilities background, spanning over 30 years working for and with utilities as a professional engineer, marketer, manager and consultant. He has also worked for information technology companies, as a consultant, marketer and business development manager, providing products and services to utilities and telecommunications companies.

He was appointed as Managing Director of Energy Response, Australia and New Zealand’s most successful Demand Response (DR) Aggregator, in 2004 and led the company from commercial inception through to its acquisition by EnerNOC Inc, the world’s largest DR Aggregator in 2011 for $34million. He has also helped start DR aggregation companies in Poland and India.

His achievements include:

• The introduction of a successful commercial DR aggregation model in Australia and New Zealand
• Consulting to utilities and commercial parties in Poland, India and several countries in Asia promoting the development of DR aggregation
• Membership of the Market Advisory Committee (MAC) in the West Australia Market and membership of the ARENA Assessment Panel
• Managing the first smart meter trial in Victoria involving electricity, gas and water metering, and chaired the Measurement and Metering Innovation Conference from 2003 to 2010.
• Investigation of DR, energy efficiency and power factor correction potential of small to medium sized commercial consumers for a network company in Queensland
• Development of a commercial model for a company that is now national solar panel installer in Australia.

He is currently assisting AGL develop a Commercial and Industrial DR capability. Michael holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Degree (Power) and Bachelor of Business Administration Degree both from Monash University.