Mr Shirish Garud, Director, Renewable Energy Technologies, has over two decades of experience in the renewable energy sector and is a well-known specialist in renewable energy technologies, energy planning and renewable energy policy studies.
He has rich experience in solar and wind resource assessment, technology development and deployment. Some of his major assignments include development of vacuum tube collectors, development of solar parabolic trough collectors, designing of solar power plants, designing and implementation of one of the world's largest solar water heating system of 120m3 day capacity for fertilizer industry. He has also worked on solar PV technologies and island electrification projects using solar PV technology.
He was also part of a UNEP-funded multinational project SWERA (Solar and Wind Resource Assessment) which mapped solar and wind resources for countries in Asia and Africa.
He led a multi-activity flagship project on 'Integrated Energy Management Master Plan for Bhutan' which was a cornerstone project for the Government of Bhutan. The project covered energy data collection, assessment and development of web based system for energy data collection, analysis and publishing. He was also co-editor of The Royal Government of Bhutan's first official Energy Data Directory 2005 and Integrated Energy Management Master Plan for Bhutan.
Mr Garud is an acknowledged and certified trainer and expert on RETScreen software, developed for renewable energy project feasibility studies and has also contributed towards major policy initiatives in India including the development of REC (Renewable Energy Certificate) mechanism.
He also headed the South East Asia Secretariat of REEEP (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, UK.) for two years during which REEEP funded various projects in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
In addition, he has also published research papers and articles in leading publications and was part of the team that developed the curriculum for long-distance course on Renewable Energy Technologies for TERI University jointly with Open University of UK.
He is a mechanical engineer with M.Tech (Energy Systems Engineering) from IIT Bombay.