Every year the APSRC features a range of international and Australian Plenary Speakers. The confirmed Plenary Speakers for 2024 are below. More will be added over time.
Dr Stephen White leads the Energy Performance Research at CSIRO. He has over 25 years of experience in energy end use efficiency and electricity industry demand side management. He is the Operating Agent for the International Energy Agency EBC Annex 81 “Data-Driven Smart Buildings”. He has oversight over key national energy-use datasets and leads the “Data Clearing House” digital platform initiative. He has played a leadership role in the start-up of several companies, and the design of award-winning airconditioning systems. He is a member of the Australian Refrigeration and Building Services “Hall of Fame”, and winner of AIRAHs James Harrison lifetime achievement award.
Dr Gabrielle Kuiper is an energy, sustainability and climate change professional with over 20 years’ experience in the corporate world, government and non-government organisations and academia. Dr Kuiper has held senior executive or senior advisory energy-related positions at the Energy Security Board, in the Office of the Prime Minister, at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and in the NSW Government. Dr Kuiper currently works internationally and in Australia on policy and regulation to support Distributed Energy Resources (DER), including as a guest contributor with IEEFA.
Dr Ron Sinton did his PhD work in Applied Physics at Stanford University developing 28%-efficient silicon concentrator solar cells in the 1980s following a BS in Engineering Physics from the University of Colorado. He then continued this work by adapting these R&D solar-cell designs to be more industrial as a founding member of SunPower Corporation. After founding Sinton Instruments in 1992, he focused his company on bringing the systematic device physics approach that was used to develop very high-efficiency silicon solar cells to the design of test and measurement instruments for the solar cells that formed the basis for the industry. This Boulder-based company in the USA supplies test-and-measurement equipment and device-physics analysis to the worldwide silicon solar-cell R&D and manufacturing industries. Through collaborations with industry and academia, Ron has published research continuously for more than four decades in silicon solar cell R&D, manufacturing, and renewable integration into the grid. Ron has leveraged this lifelong involvement in renewable energy into the topic of the clean energy transition by participating in local energy-policy planning for the electricity supply as an expert witness in Colorado utility regulation proceedings that determine the future of Colorado’s electricity grid. He has both an insider’s view of the last 40 years of history of the international PV industry and a motivation to learn how to influence the future transition to clean energy through both technical and policy contributions. Ron received the Cherry Award (for lifetime technical contributions to PV) at the 2014 IEEE PVSC conference.