Research interests:

High-temperature solar thermal energy collection, storage and conversion technologies. Current areas of interest include:

• Development of low-cost heliostat and parabolic dish technologies
• Solar receivers capable of efficient operation at 700°C+, such as sodium and particle receivers
• Thermal storage concepts for energy storage at 700°C+, that use low cost materials, such as cheap salts or solid particles
• High-temperature solar thermal system design, to improve integration of solar collection, storage and power block subsystems

Bio:

Dr Coventry is an engineer experienced in development and commercialisation of solar technologies. He presently leads heliostat cost down and receiver performance improvement projects for the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative (ASTRI) and prior, he was the Principal Engineer at Wizard Power, and led the engineering team and development of the Big Dish CSP technology since the company was established in 2005. Dr Coventry holds a BE/BSc from the University of Melbourne (1997), and a PhD from the Australian National University (2004).

Research opportunities with Dr Joe COVENTRY

• Investigation of optical and structural aspects of sandwich-panel mirror facet design for heliostats.
• Investigation of a new high-temperature, high-efficiency tubular receiver using molten sodium as the heat transfer fluid.
• System design for high-temperature sodium-based solar thermal energy storage