2008 Alumni Award for Young Alumni Achievement

Andrew Tanner is awarded the Young Alumni Award for Achievement for graduates under 30 for his role in pioneering breakthrough renewable energy technologies.

At the age of 28, Andrew has already made a contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and improving the quality of life for humanity through his development of new solar thermal energy systems. In early 2003, when he was just 23, he developed a prototype of a new reflector for the energy company Solar Heat & Power before going on to write his undergraduate thesis on the storage of thermal energy in co-operation with the company. After graduating, he joined Solar Heat & Power full-time and played a pivotal role in the success of the firm, which later gained investment from the United States leading to the formation of parent company Ausra. As a youthful lead engineer at Solar Heat & Power, he implemented solar thermal arrays at a number of locations including the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle and was a driving force behind the company winning a contract to install a major solar thermal project in Julich, Germany. He also made an integral contribution to the mechanical design of the company’s Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector and Multi Tower Solar Array technologies.

This year, Andrew joined with the founding Managing Director of Solar Heat & Power to launch another solar technology company, Chromasun, which is developing a solar micro-concentrator system for rooftops. The system will be able to provide both solar electricity and hot water from the same panel and in other applications provide the energy for absorption chiller air conditioning, solar hydrogen production and UV sterilisation. His ingenuity in the field of sustainable energy saw him recognised as a finalist in the Bulletin magazine Smart 100 Young Achievers list in 2007.