ISES Column in pv magazine (December 2025) - Solar, wind and storage: stable prices, stable grid

🌞🌍 In their December pv magazine column, former ISES Board Directors and leaders of the ISES PV Strategy Committee, Prof. Andrew Blakers (ANU) and Prof. Ricardo Rüther (UFSC) spotlight Australia providing what the world is now beginning to realize: renewable energy delivers stable prices, a stable grid, and high resilience against grid disruption. With wholesale electricity prices flat since 2016 - even as solar and wind have surged - Australia shows that clean energy doesn’t drive costs up. It drives them down.👉 Read the full article at the link!

 

 

Meet the authors

Ricardo RĂĽther

Prof. Dr. Ricardo RĂĽther studied Metallurgy and Materials Science at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Western Australia. Ricardo RĂĽther is a Full Professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianopolis-Brazil, in the field of solar photovoltaics, solar irradiation resource assessment, electrochemical storage and electromobility.

Ricardo served as ISES Vice President from 2022-2024 and is currently part of the fiscal committee of ABENS, the official ISES section in Brazil. In 2019, Ricardo was also awarded the ISES Achievement through Action Award.

 

Prof. Andrew Blakers

Andrew Blakers is Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University. He was a Humboldt Fellow and has held Australian Research Council QEII and Senior Research Fellowships. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering, the Institute of Energy and the Institute of Physics. He is a Public Policy Fellow at ANU.

Professor Blakers’ primary interest is advanced silicon solar cells - increasing efficiency and reducing cost, including for thin film silicon solar cell technology concentrator solar cells, tandem solar cells and PV components and systems. He is also interested in sustainable energy policy, including detailed analysis of energy systems with high (50-100%) penetration by wind and photovoltaics with support from pumped hydro energy storage. He has extensive experience with basic and applied research, and led the teams that developed PERC and Sliver cell technologies. He also has interest in sustainable energy policy, and is engaged in detailed analysis of energy systems with high (50-100%) penetration by wind and photovoltaics with support from pumped hydro energy storage.

He served as ISES Board Director from 2022-2024.