Professor John Balachandra

Biography

Professor John Balachandra joined UC Santa Cruz in January 2010 as a Professor of Electrical Engineering, emphasizing in the MSEE and Ph.D. program in Electric power and Energy Systems. He is also Director of the Center for Sustainable Energy and Power Systems at UC Santa Cruz. Prior to 2010, he has spent the past 25 years as Professor of Electrical Power Engineering at California State University Sacramento and as a consultant to the largest power companies in the USA, UNDP, the US Department of Defense and Energy. He is currently President and CEO of EnerGeon International, LLC. with more than 34 years of power systems experience in Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and the USA. He has chaired national and international conferences in Energy related topics for the past 15 years and authored many technical papers in conferences and journals in Electrical Power Engineering. Energeon Power is developing Biomass/Solar Thermal power stations in Sierra Leone,Sri Lanka and California, and Smart Grid projects in California in partnership with US, Canadian and Danish companies. He received his BSEE from the University of Sri Lanka and his MSEE and Doctor of Engineering from Texas A& M, in electrical power engineering.