Renate Egan
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

Publications
Title & place of publication![]() |
Author | Research area | Type | Links | Year |
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'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 | link | 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 | link | 2021 |
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 | Link | 2022 |
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 | Link | 2023 |
'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 | link | 2019 |
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 | Sustainability & general | Reports and Working Papers | Link | 2023 |