Confirmed speakers include:

Jeff Hoy (JP Energy)

Topic : Design Workshop

Jeff Hoy has been involved in renewable energy for over 17 years. In 1997 he co-wrote the draft of the current stand-alone power systems design standard (AS 4509). As a member of the Clean Energy Council (formally BCSE) Standards, Accreditation and Training Committee since 1997 Jeff has been instrumental in building the PV industry in Australia.

Jeff established JP Energy in 1992 and has worked as a small business owner, system design and installer. He has installed countless renewable energy systems over the past 17 years.

Jeff will be running the workshop at this year conference that will cover the sizing and design of stand alone and grid connected power systems.

• Determining energy and max demand requirements

• Sizing of batteries, PV array and other generation source

• Sizing of components, e.g inverters, charge controllers

• Cable sizing

• Battery installations

• Design for lightning

• The use of the SPS and GC design tools

This year's workshop is proudly supported by EECA.

Kathryn Maxwell (DOC)

Presentation can be downloaded here

Topic : The Department of Conservation's Sustainability Programme.

Kathryn for the last 2 years has been the Sustainability Manager for DOC. Her responsibility has been to ensure DOC achieves the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy targets for public service departments (reduce energy usage per FTE by 10%, km travelled by 15%). In addition to meet DOC's target of reducing diesel usage on islands by 50% by 2012,and to ensure they demonstrate leadership in becoming a more sustainable organisation. To achieve these goals DOC has implemented a number of renewable energy systems at remote sites.

Before working at DOC Kathryn worked at the Ministry for the Environment encourgaing 47 government agencies to adopt more sustainable business practices. Kathryn has worked in government for 20 years (17 in Australia) before moving to New Zealand in March 2006. This included nearly 10 years with the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Dr Tim Kemmitt (Industrial Research Ltd & MacDiarmid Institute)

Presentation can be downloaded here

Topic : Quantum Dot Solar Cells: Recent Advances at IRL

Dr Tim Kemmitt is a Senior Research Scientist at IRL in Wellington and a Principal Investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He completed his PhD studies at the University of Southampton UK in 1989, and carried out post doctoral research at the university of Otago. Dr Kemmitt has many years experience working on thin coatings of active or functional materials, in particular materials that interact with light. His current research programme was conceived out of frustration in recognising that solar energy is enormously abundant, yet the cost of harnessing this with traditional solar cells puts it out of economic reach. Thus the current programme is focused on the development of photovoltaic cells with high efficiency, good longevity and low cost, based on highly efficient quantum dot absorbers. All-inorganic cells produced using low-cost wet chemical techniques are showing great promise for the future. As well as advances in cell design, the IRL team has been making some advances on transparent conductors which are required to allow sunlight to pass through while efficiently transporting the photocurrent generated by the cell. Within the next 2 years we plan to set up a demonstration site to promote the technology.

Dr Justin Hodgkiss (Victoria University & MacDiarmid Institute)

Presentation can be downloaded here

Topic : Recent advances in photovoltaic materials, future costs and commercial products

Dr Justin Hodgkiss is a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington and a Principal Investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Dr Hodgkiss completed his PhD as a Fulbright scholar at M.I.T. and carried out post-doctoral research in the Cavendish laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Dr Hodgkiss' research program is focused on the development of molecular electronic materials for low-cost printable electronics - primarily solar cells. Recently, Dr Hodgkiss has used laser spectroscopy to develop a detailed understanding of the physics of photocurrent generation in polymer solar cells and elucidate how power conversion efficiencies can be markedly improved.

Bill Currie (Powerhouse Wind)

Topic : Development of the Powerhouse Wind single bladed turbine

Bill has a strong personal interest in a great wind turbine solution, he lives in an off-grid house and has a long standing interest and belief in local energy solutions. After mechanical engineering training, Bill worked for New Zealand Electricity for 4 years. Following some time working overseas, Bill did an MBA at Otago University, including a project for Fisher & Paykel Appliances which evolved into 18 years of employment with the company.

He worked in a number of roles starting with design engineering on the DishDrawer team, and concluding with responsibility for Engineering Services for all sites. Since early 2007 Bill has been working full time on the Powerhouse Wind domestic turbine project.

The Powerhouse Wind Turbine:

Product development is an exciting journey and this presentation will give some insight into the path behind Powerhouse Wind’s aim of creating a world class wind turbine for domestic applications.

There are many challenges in creating an appliance like turbine that could become a widely adopted solution for household level distributed generation. What is required is a device that quickly pays back its investment in energy and capital, performs well in turbulent disturbed wind, runs quietly in all wind conditions, is completely automated, is always safe and reliable with little maintenance for at least 20 years, and can be simply and quickly installed.

The presentation will cover how we have worked to address these issues, and give a summary of our progress and the results achieved to date.

Alan Booth (Enasolar)

Topic : Development of New Zealand's first grid tie inverter