The Four Societies Meeting 2008

"Future prospect for large-scale solar thermal power
technologies"

Dr Keith Lovegrove, Australian National University

Wednesday 5 March 2008, 6.30 for 7 pm
Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, City Road

ABSTRACT

The Australian National University has been working on paraboloidal-dish solar concentrators since the early 1970s. At ANU construction work has just begun on a new 500 m² dish prototype that will be the basis for the commercial plans of Wizard Power Pty Ltd, the company that has an exclusive licence to the ANU technology. Dish concentrators along with trough-shaped linear concentrators and central receiver towers with heliostat fields are the basic approaches available for solar thermal power systems. The last two years have seen a major resurgence in activity in this field. This talk will give an overview of the activity in Australia and overseas and at the ANU in particular. The potential scope for solar thermal power systems to make a major contribution to energy supply will be discussed, including the longer-term potential for solar thermochemical production of fuels for transport and export.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Dr Keith Lovegrove is the leader of the Solar Thermal Group in the Department of Engineering at Australian National University. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Energy Systems and Systems Engineering within the Department of Engineering.

The Solar Thermal Group works on a range of high temperature and low temperature thermal technologies. The group has continued on from the pioneering work that was begun in ANU in the early 1970's. A highlight of the work has been the completion of the world first experimental solar driven closed loop thermochemical energy storage system based on ammonia dissociation. The group operates experimental facilities centred around ANU's 400 m² and 20 m² paraboloidal-dish solar concentrators. (Visit http://engnet.anu.edu.au/DEresearch/solarthermal/ for more information on the Solar Thermal Group at ANU.)

He has had a long involvement with the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society, a section of the International Solar Energy Society. The society is a non-profit organization or renewable energy professionals and supporters and includes among its members most of the renewable-energy researchers in Australia. Dr Lovegrove has served in the past as Chair, Vice Chair and currently as Treasurer. During his time as Chair, he initiated the well-known 'Solar House Day', held across both countries each September. He was also Chair of the organization's Solar 2006 conference organizing committee. (Visit http://www.anzses.org and http://www.solarhouseday.com for more information.)

He has authored or co-authored over 100 research papers and contributed to many media interviews and reports on the renewable energy field.