Keeping up the standards

21 November 2003

Ted Spooner, a senior lecturer in the school of electrical engineering and telecommunications, has won the top annual award from Standards Australia for his work in renewable energy and photovoltaic cells.

The Pinnacle award, presented at a ceremony in Sydney last week, honours major efforts in generating Australian and international standards.

Mr Spooner has been involved in inverter development and testing for renewable energy applications since 1988. Since 1999 he has been project leader responsible for setting up and running Australia's renewable energy systems testing laboratory, now known as RESLab, under the Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy.

He is currently a member of Australian Standards Committee EL42 which is developing Australian standards for renewable energy systems and chairs two subcommittees developing standards for grid connection of energy systems via inverters and Inverters for stand-alone systems.

He is also the Australian representative on the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) technical committee TC82 for Photovoltaics. He recently chaired the committee's international meeting in Frankfurt.