Rafael Guedez appointed Associate Professor at HPT

Rafael is a mechanical engineer with broad experience in R&D, project management, finance, and business development in the energy sector. He completed his PhD at KTH, focusing on the techno-financial analysis and optimisation of solar power plants with storage, and later a two-year executive programme in Management and Leadership at MIT Sloan.

Alongside his work at KTH, Rafael remains active in collaboration with industry and other organisations through advisory roles and joint projects in the areas of solar power, energy storage, and thermal power engineering. At HPT, where he serves as Head of Division, Rafael’s research focuses on techno-economic performance models for optimising the design and operation of energy conversion and storage technologies, systems, and power plants. The aim is to support technology manufacturers, investors, project developers, operators, and policy-makers in making well-informed decisions.

Rafael is currently Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI in twenty-four R&D projects funded by industry, the European Commission, and the Swedish Energy Agency. You can read more about these projects here .

Through these and earlier projects, Rafael has led and supervised a growing team of PhD students, an effort that was recognised with the PhD Supervisor of the Year award in 2021. He has also supervised more than 60 Master’s theses.

Rafael is deeply engaged in education at the department. He is course responsible for MJ2500 – Large Scale Solar Power, and contributes regularly to several other courses, including MJ2507, MJ2511, CK2010, MJ2409, MJ2436, MJ2411, MJ2386, among others.

Rafael often emphasises that his main motivation in academia is his students. He values the opportunity to support their development and enjoys learning from them in return, seeing this as a way to continuously improve his own skills as a teacher and researcher.