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This is a Consortium of 8 Universities and 1 Research Laboratory with expertise in wind turbine design, location & operation, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, materials, electrical machinery, control, reliability and condition monitoring. The Consortium has the active support of 9 Partners with Industrial and Research experience, including wind farm Operators, Manufacturers & Consultants. The Consortium's objective is to investigate Wind Energy Technologies.The Management Hub is Strathclyde University, the Finance Hub is Durham University.The challenge facing the Consortium is significant encompassing the search for engineering solutions:1. To improve the efficiency and reliability of wind energy.2. To reduce the cost of energy production.3. To facilitate the siting of machines in off-shore locations.4. To reduce the impact on existing infrastructure.The interdependences of the challenges and the interdisciplinary nature of the work call for flexibility, imagination and careful co-ordination of effort from the consortium that includes experts in all the relevant engineering disciplines.We believe that the Consortium offers a unique opportunity in wind energy research. The EU Framework VI programme addresses renewable energy but concentrates on the demonstration of technology. In contrast, the Consortium will focus sharply on the technological challenges, particularly those related to the exploitation of the UK's extensive offshore wind resource. The Consortium will undertake some truly interdisciplinary research that is essential in a technology comprised of many different branches of engineering. The overall objective is to improve the acceptability and cost-effectiveness of large scale offshore wind energy development by 1. Investigating the reliability and availability of wind turbines and to modelling their failure modes in order to develop a predictive and proactive condition monitoring system.2. Assessing the potential design limits of large wind turbines via detailed understanding of technical developments in innovative materials and active load reduction.3. Developing new/improved methods for optimised siting and design of large wind turbines as influenced by wind flow, seabed movement, lightning and radar visibility.

This project aims to exploit electronic and vibrational properties of nanoscale materials that are 1000 times smaller than diameter of a human hair to discover new materials for energy harvesting and cooling in consumer electronics such as mobile phones and laptops. The ultimate goal of the research is to understand quantum and phonon transport through molecular structures for thermoelectricity and thermal management. The candidate will receive a broad training on computational materials modelling and gain experience with cutting edge quantum transport simulation methods, conduct a vibrant research with publication potential and would have an opportunity to conduct collaborative projects with internationally leading experimental groups in Europe and beyond.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is becoming a major source of renewable energy around the globe, with the International Energy Agency predicting it to be the largest contributor to renewables by 2024. This uptake is driven by the building of large PV power plants in regions of high solar resource, and also by the deployment of so-called distributed PV on the roofs of homes and industrial sites. The dominant PV technology to date has been based upon the crystalline semiconductor silicon. The production of silicon PV panels has been commoditised for large-scale manufacturing with costs reducing by a factor of ten in under a decade. Our research addresses the next generation of printed PV technologies which could deliver solar energy with far greater functional and processing flexibility than c-Si or traditional compound semiconductors, enabling tuneable design to meet the requirements of market applications inaccessible to current PV technologies. In particular, we seek to advance photovoltaics based upon organic and perovskite semiconductors - materials which can be processed from solution into the simplest possible solar cell structures, hence reducing cost and embodied energy from the manufacturing. These new technologies are still in the early stages of development with many fundamental scientific and engineering challenges still to be addressed. These challenges will be the foci of our research agenda, as will the development of solar cells for specific applications for which there is currently no optimal technological solution, but which need attributes such as light weight, flexible form factor, tuned spectral response or semi-transparency. These are unique selling points of organic and perovskite solar PV but fall outside the performance (and often cost) windows of the traditional technologies. Our specific target sectors are power for high value communications (for example battery integratable solar cells for unmanned aerial vehicles), and improved energy and resource efficiency power for the built environment (including solar windows and local for 'internet of things' devices). In essence we seek to extend the reach and application of PV beyond the provision of stationary energy. To deliver our ambitious research and technology development agenda we have assembled three world-renowned groups in next generation PV researchers at Swansea University, Imperial College London and Oxford University. All are field leaders and the assembled team spans the fundamental and applied science and engineering needed to answer both the outstanding fundamental questions and reduce the next generation PV technology to practise. Our research programme called Application Targeted Integrated Photovoltaics also involves industrial partners from across the PV supply chain - early manufacturers of the PV technology, component suppliers and large end users who understand the technical and cost requirements to deliver a viable product. The programme is primarily motivated by the clear need to reduce CO2 emissions across our economies and societies and our target sectors are of high priority and potential in this regard. It is also important for the UK to maintain an internationally competitive capability (and profile) in the area of next generation renewables. As part of our agenda we will be ensuring the training of scientists and engineers equipped with the necessary multi-disciplinary skills and closely connected to the emerging industry and its needs to ensure the UK stays pre-eminent in next generation photovoltaics.

Laser Optical Engineering wish to develop a high performance photovoltaic based solar collector with a 3 fold increase in power output over current offerings. The product will use a solar harvesting area three quarters smaller and much simpler than currently available, using optics to concentrate and steer solar energy onto Photo voltaic cells. this approach will reduce the conventional tracking of the sun from two planes to a single linear motion which will be done within the system. Novel optics will also reduce the accuracy of the tracking needed improving the system performance and output duration. By keeping the moving parts within a sealed system the impact on the environment and maintenance will be significantly reduced: low curvateure outer optics will be much easier to clean than the heavily radiused, or stepped fresnel lenses found in most concentrating systems. The current system offerings are frequently based upon silicon based photo cells which are at best 13% efficient – which means large areas committed to extracting a small amount of electricity from the sun. Currently high efficiency solar cells cost significantly more per watt making them commercially uncompetitive. Our approach uses an innovative approach to significantly increase the collection efficiency by both generating electricity at a conversion rate of 40% and making use of heat generated. To do this we utilise highly efficient multiple junction photovoltaic cells and integrate them with cooling circuits to increase the efficiency of an air conditioning cycle. By integrating both these circuit in a stand alone module our system will be able to provide both hot water and electricity from a small foot print module. Since up to 70% of electricity in some countries is used to provide air conditioning and cooling our system could be used to power a heat exchanger to convert hot water to cold.

No abstract available.

"Offshore wind turbines operate in harsh and extreme environments such as the North Sea. As blades continue getting larger, their tip speeds can exceed 100m/s. At these speeds, any particulates in the air such as rain, dust, salt, insects, etc. can wear away the surface of a blade's leading edge, a phenomenon known as ""leading edge erosion"" (LEE). This, in turn, alters the blade's aerodynamic shape, affecting its efficiency and potentially exposing the blade to further and more serious damage, thereby reducing its working life. Whilst the extent and nature of contributing factors to LEE are not yet fully understood, it can be said that at some point in their lifespan, all wind turbine blades will suffer from some form or degree of LEE which will need to be addressed. Maintaining blades in the offshore wind sector is an expensive and dangerous job where, typically, highly skilled rope access technicians are required to scale down the blades to carry out leading edge repairs. Having successfully proven the concept in Phase 1 of the Innovate UK funding round, in this project, BladeBug Limited will continue its work with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult to develop, build and test a complete, walking robotic system designed specifically to carry out a number of these detailed inspections and repetitive repairs on the leading edges of wind turbine blades. The ability to perform these tasks remotely will free up time of skilled rope access technicians to undertake specialist repairs or upgrades to blades that only they can do. More blades could then be inspected and treated in the same time frames, maximising the electrical output of the turbines and, as a result, increasing revenues to turbine owners as well as the environmental benefit to everyone in CO2 savings."

Development of Interseasonal Heat Storage systems for individual high efficiency dwellings.

A new network is proposed which will focus on energy efficiency improvements opportunites in the process industry. The process industry is a substantial user of energy and whilst many process systems have been optimised in recent years, there is an opportunity to improve the efficient use of thermal energy in existing plant operation and the design of future plants. To date most processes have been optimised on a 'stand-alone' basis. However, the efficient use of thermal energy requires a different approach as opportunities, knowledge and motivation to improve efficiencies are likely to be both within and outside the plant or company who operates it. Therefore successful future efficiency developments must be collaborative and consequently the networking aspect must be addressed in a comprehensive and effective manner. The network will forge close links and work with industry, academia, government (national and local) and NGOs to support the maximisation of energy recovery, plant efficiency improvements, reduce CO2 emissions and use of cleaner, more secure fuel sources. Outputs will include the establishment of a sustainable network, development of a network website, repository of resources, forum groups for strategic discussion, a report on Grand Challenges which will identify a long term research vision and future needs analysis and a final report. The network will operate via a series of industry and researcher forums, conferences, short courses and sandpits. The network will be managed by Newcastle University and key participants will include Sheffield and Manchester Universities and the Tyndall Centre. Industry will also play a key role in the network management through Steering Committee representation. Dissemination and knowledge transfer of both technical and non-technical issues will be of paramount importance to the network's operation.

Understanding the physics of the light-matter interaction in materials with the perovskite crystal structure is an extremely active and exciting topic at present. Inorganic-organic hybrid perovskites have provided an entirely new class of optoelectronic materials with excellent photovoltaic performance (over 22% solar power conversion efficiency), and have further potential for use in light emitters. However, the physics of what happens after light is absorbed in these compounds is poorly understood: some studies have concluded that free, mobile charges are created directly, while other work has reported the formation of excitons - bound electron-hole pairs. In this PhD project the student will investigate how free charges and excitons are created and subsequently move, using ultrafast terahertz spectroscopy. This is an advanced experimental method that probes the conductivity of materials as they respond to pulses of light with <1ps duration.

High fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be used to simulate flows past individual and small clusters of wind turbines to develop detailed models of wind turbine wakes and their merger and interactions. The performance and wakes of generic large turbines will be considered. The influence of vertical flow shearing, cross-stream variation in speed and turbulence intensity, and relative device placement that lead to inviscid (blockage) and viscous interactional effects will be considered. CFD simulations will be performed with blade resolved RANS models and Actuator Line LES models in order to capture relevant wake physics. Simplified representation and reconstruction of turbine wakes is of critical importance to developing understanding of the physical processes governing wake evolution. Flow-field decon-struction methods such as POD (Proper Orthogonal Decomposition) will be used to identify the leading order wake modes and physical processes important in wake development, merger and representation, which will be used to devel-op new wake merger and evolution models and algorithms.