Rate My Professor Joe Coventry

Professor Joe Coventry is a Professor in the School of Engineering within the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) and Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne in 1997, followed by a PhD in Engineering from ANU in 2004. Prior to his current academic role, Coventry was the Principal Engineer at Wizard Power, where he led the engineering team and spearheaded the development of the Big Dish concentrating solar power (CSP) technology from the company's inception in 2005. He also holds an ANU Translational Fellowship.

Coventry's research expertise lies in concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies and thermal energy storage (TES), with a focus on enhancing their competitiveness to support decarbonisation in power generation and heavy industry. His ongoing projects include low-cost heliostat technologies, sodium receiver technologies, optical absorber coatings for CST, high-temperature TES, and hydrogen supply chains for industry. He leads the heliostat cost reduction and receiver performance improvement initiatives for the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative (ASTRI) and heads the Solar Thermal research cluster at the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions. Additionally, he contributes to clusters on energy storage and recovery, renewable fuels, hydrogen economy, and industrial decarbonisation, and supervises research students. Selected publications include 'Titania-Based Coral-Structured Solar Absorber Coating with Improved Scalability and Durability at High Temperature' (Advanced Science, 2024, with Y. Guo et al.), 'Co-optimisation of the heliostat field and receiver for concentrated solar power plants' (Applied Energy, 2023, with S. Wang et al.), 'Boiling sodium and melting salt: Evaluation and optimisation of a novel solar–thermal system concept' (Applied Thermal Engineering, 2023, with Z. Kee and J. Pye), and 'Experimental evaluation of an indirectly-irradiated packed-bed solar thermochemical reactor for calcination–carbonation chemical looping' (Chemical Engineering Journal, 2023, with L. Li et al.). Coventry supports ANU's Below Zero initiative aiming for negative greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 through his work on renewable energy generation, storage, and industrial decarbonisation.