Associate Professor Joe Coventry

Associate Professor

Craig Building (35A), 2.02

joe.coventry@anu.edu.au

+61 2 612 52643

Bio
Research interests
Research projects
Student projects
Publications
PhD Students
Courses

Dr Coventry is a researcher and engineer experienced in development and commercialisation of concentrating solar technologies. He is an Associate Professor at ANU, and holds an ANU Translational Fellowship. Prior, he was the Principal Engineer at Wizard Power, and led the engineering team and development of the Big Dish CSP technology. Dr Coventry holds a BE/BSc from the University of Melbourne (1997), and a PhD from the Australian National University (2004).

My expertise is in the field of concentrating solar systems, both concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) and concentrating solar thermal (CST). Current research projects span the following topics:

Development of low-cost heliostats, particularly development of low cost, highly accurate mirror panel technologies, and characterising mirror panel performance
Sensible sodium receiver technologies, including optimisation of receiver geometry, and understanding heat transfer and thermal stresses in the containing tubes.
Sodium tubular boiler technologies, coupled to a PCM storage system, particularly thermal transport phenomena of multi-phase processes.
Optical absorber coatings for high-flux solar receivers
Operation and maintenance of CST plants, particularly methods of measuring soiling levels on heliostats
Thermal batteries, in particular understanding the value proposition and testing high-temperature energy storage technologies