Renate Egan

School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering

Renate Egan is Professor Deputy Head of School (Engagement) in the School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy Engineering. She leads the UNSW activity in the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, the national centre for photovoltaics research led by UNSW, in partnership with ANU, UQ, CSIRO University of Melbourne and Monash, with the objective to work together on the next generation of photovoltaics.  

Renate joined UNSW in 2014 after a 20 year career in industry where she led manufacturing and technology development in Australia, Germany and China and is a leading authority on manufacturing costing and technology transfer. 

Renate is also Co-Founder of Solar Analytics, Australia's largest independent energy monitoring provider. In earlier roles, as Director and CTO of CSG Solar AG and Managing Director of Suntech R&D Australia Pty Ltd, Renate held executive leadership roles in technology development in the solar industry at a time of dramatic progress in manufacturing, development and deployment.  

With expertise across industry, manufacturing and small business, government, university and not-for-profits, Renate now participates on a number of national and international panels, boards and review committees across the energy sector. Renate represents Australian on the Executive Committee of the IEA PV Power Systems program.

Major Research Themes

Techno-economic analysis. Bringing together a lifetime of experience in taking technology to market, This project focuses on developing models and metrics for assessing new technology developments for their commercial viability and impact on energy markets. The research is cross-disciplinary, taking into account engineering developments, financial modelling, energy markets and environmental and social impacts.

Energy Data for Smart Decision Making. As the energy industry shifts from centralised to decentralised generation the use of good data  becomes critical for decision making. WIth a deep understanding of the cost trajectories in solar deployment, and with increasing visibility of energy data in networks, this research seeks to use machine learning and big-data analysis to understand energy generation and demand patterns, including elements of generation, storage and forecasting.

 

For a list of Renate's publications please visit Google Scholar here

Renate 1b sq

Publications

Title & place of publication Author Research area Type Links Year
Energy Resilience in Bushfires and Extreme Weather Events Sophie Adams , Mike Roberts , Shanil Samarakoon , Ellie Kallmier, Michael Dillon, Alison Potter, Rachel Szczepaniak, Rob Passey , Anna Bruce , Declan Kuch , Dr Iain MacGill, Renate Egan Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation, Sustainability & general Reports and Working Papers 2023
Real-world data analysis of distributed PV and battery energy storage system curtailment in low voltage networks Baran Yildiz , Dr Naomi Stringer , Timothy Klymenko, Muhammad Syahman Samhan, Greg Abramowitz, Anna Bruce , Dr Iain MacGill, Renate Egan , Alistair B. Sproul Electricity Markets & Restructuring, Technology Assessments Journal Papers 2023
A Novel Temperature-Independent Model for Estimating the Cooling Energy in Residential Homes for Pre-Cooling and Solar Pre-Cooling Simon Heslop , Baran Yildiz , Mike Roberts , Dong Chen, Tim Lau, Shayan Naderi , Anna Bruce , Dr Iain MacGill, Renate Egan Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation, Technology Assessments Articles 2022
'Analysis of electricity consumption and thermal storage of domestic electric water heating systems to utilize exess PV generation', Energy, 235 Baran Yildiz , Jose I. Bilbao, Mike Roberts , Simon Heslop , Jonathan Dore, Anna Bruce , Iain MacGill , Renate Egan , Alistair B. Sproul Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation Journal Papers 2021
'Assessment of control tools for utilizing excess distributed photovoltaic generation in domestic electric water heating systems', Applied Energy, 300 Baran Yildiz , Mike Roberts , Jose I. Bilbao, Simon Heslop , Anna Bruce , Jonathon Dore, Iain MacGill , Renate Egan , Alistair B. Sproul Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation Journal Papers 2021
'A characterisation of air conditioning consumption in Australia’s eastern capitals' - Asia-Pacific Solar Research Conference Simon Heslop , Anna Bruce , Renate Egan , Iain MacGill Electricity Markets & Restructuring, Energy Efficiency & Distributed Generation Conference Papers 2019