Obituary by Trevor Berrill
Dr Peter Jolly passed away on 3 August, after a battle with leukemia. One could not wish for a better friend and colleague. I met Peter while working at the University of Queensland as a wind energy researcher and technical officer in the 1980s. Peter was a researcher in the use of solar energy for air drying of grain crops, at the University’s Solar Energy Research Centre (SERC). This work followed on from his PhD studies for sorrel drying at the University of the West Indies, in Trinidad, and at the University of Queensland for cassava drying. About 40 percent of final energy use in society is for
these low temperature applications. However, the importance of using solar energy to displace fossil fuels in such applications, and of Peter’s work in this area, is still largely overlooked. His thesis provided improvements in computer modelling and life cycle costing of solar drying systems. He identified one of the key barriers to the uptake of solar energy, which still persists today, subsidised fossil fuel use. Without fossil fuel subsidies, his research showed that solar crop drying was technically and economically viable.
Peter also researched the use of greenhouse covered, prawn farm ponds, to increase aqua-culture production. He recently contributed again to a research group at the University of Queensland on farm greenhouse modelling.
Peter was an active member of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society (ANZSES), and was Queensland branch president for some time, chairing the branch working group for the Solar 89 Conference at the University of Queensland. As well, he presented many papers to these conferences over the years.
In 1990, with the demise of SERC, Peter and his young family moved to Singapore to pursue a career as a research engineer with Carrier Air Conditioning and later to China to manage a research centre for the electronics industry. He returned to Australia to work for Highland Pacific on a proposed copper mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. As Peter had excellent people skills and could speak Chinese, he was involved in negotiations between the Chinese investors in the project, the PNG government and local indigenous people. Peter’s concern for the local people resulted in the construction of a solar powered teaching facility at the site.
Peter’s interests in energy systems were very diverse. He recognised the environmental and social impacts of our current dependency on fossil fuels and was always up for a discussion around these issues, seeking both technical and socio-political solutions. He sought to counter the myths about solar energy that were propagated by vested interests. One such example was his crucial research paper at the Solar 89 Conference, disproving the myth that solar water heaters and photovoltaic off grid power systems never pay for their embodied energy over their lifetime. He examined the life cycle energy use of these solar systems over a broad range of climate types, from Darwin to Hobart, and showed that even in high latitude, lower solar radiation regions, solar systems generated far more energy over their lifetime than was consumed in their construction.
Peter was always willing to help analyse energy problems. For example, he helped me with a consultancy project assessing energy use for the National Parks and Wildlife Service off grid power systems in Central Queensland and on Moreton Island. He quickly put together a program for life cycle assessment, to allow us to compare solar energy power systems, and energy efficiency improvements to the then wasteful and polluting diesel fuelled, power systems. He also assisted me using the early CSIRO “Cheetah” program1 for analysis of heating and cooling energy consumption in buildings, which I used to help with passive solar design of the Renewable Energy Centre at Ithaca TAFE in Brisbane. Peter will be sadly missed by all who knew him.
- Later enhanced to become the Chenath computation ‘engine’ in NatHERS home energy rating software ↩︎