• Energy Research
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There are two types of wind turbines, a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) and a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). A HAWT has high efficiencies, but also high costs of materials, transportation, installation and maintenance. A VAWT has low efficiency, but lower costs of materials, transportation, installation and maintenance. In comparison, a VAWT also offers a subtler design with reduced shadow flicker, bird strike, and noise. However, due to the low efficiency of a VAWT, it is not an economically commercial method of producing renewable energy. AB Power has developed a technology to increase the efficiency of a VAWT close to that of a HAWT without sacrificing the cost savings. This has led to a far cheaper method of harnessing energy from the wind than ever before. Due to the affordability of the VAWT, it will have a dramatic impact on the fight against climate change. The technology being developed at AB Power will make renewable energy available to more customers than ever before. Through the growth of AB Power, there will be a direct relationship with the reduction of UK emissions.

The latest report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'Global warming of 1.5C' emphasises the need for 'rapid and far-reaching' actions now to curb carbon emission to limit global warming and climate change impact. Decarbonising heating is one of the actions which is going to play a key role in reducing carbon emission. The Committee on Climate Change states that insufficient progress has been made towards the low carbon heating homes target that requires immediate attention to meet our carbon budget. It is well known fact that the ground is warmer compared to air in winter and cooler in summer. Therefore our ancestors build caves and homes underground to protect them against extreme cold/hot weather. Geothermal energy pile (GEEP) basically consists of a pile foundation, heat exchanging loops and a heat pump. Heat exchanging loops are usually made of high density polyethylene pipes and carry heat exchanging fluid (water and/or ethylene glycol). Loops are attached to a reinforcement cage and installed into the concrete pile foundations of a building to extract the shallow ground energy via a heat pump to heat the building during winter. The cycle is reversed during summer when heat is collected from the building and stored in the ground. GEEP can play an important role in decarbonising heating as it utilises the sustainable ground energy available under our feet. High initial cost remains the main challenge in deploying heat pump technology. In the case of GEEP, the initial cost can be reduced, if the heat capacity of the concrete is improved and loop length can thus be decreased. This can be achieved by incorporating phase change material (PCM) in the concrete. PCM has a peculiar characteristic that it absorbs or releases large amount of energy during phase change (solid to liquid or liquid to solid). This project aims to develop an innovative solution by combining two technologies GEEP and PCM to obtain more heat energy per unit loop length which would reduce the cost of GEEP significantly. PCM has never been used with GEEP in the past, therefore obvious research questions that come to the mind are (1) how to inject PCM in concrete (2) what would be the effect of PCM on concrete strength and workability (3) how PCM would affect load capacity of GEEP as primary objective of the GEEP is to support structure (4) how much heat energy would be available (5) what would happen to the ground temperature surrounding GEEP (6) how much it would cost (7) whether it would reduce carbon footprint of concrete. We aim to answer all the above research questions by employing sustainable and environmental friendly PCM and impregnate it in light weight aggregates (LWAs) made with waste material (e.g. fly ash, slag, glass). There are three advantages of using LWAs made from waste: first LWAs will replace natural aggregate in concrete as natural aggregates are carbon intense, second LWAs are porous and light so they can absorb large amount of PCM and reduce the weight of concrete, third reuse the waste. Laboratory scale concrete GEEP will be made with PCM impregnated LWAs and tested under heating and cooling load to investigate thermal (heat transfer) and mechanical (load capacity) performance. Extensive experimental and numerical study will be carried out to design and develop novel PCM incorporated GEEP which can provide renewable ground energy for heating and cooling.

"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."

Offshore wind is proving very attractive for operators, especially due to the higher yields and less resistance from onshore homeowners and stakeholders. It is predicted that it could provide all the UK's electricity requirement, with minimal emission and visual impacts. However, there exist a major barrier to further exploitation due to the high levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) from offshore wind (£140/MWhr), which is 2-3 times higher than other key renewable sources (onshore wind and solar) and nuclear (a large non-renewable, but low emission source). The high LCOE is caused by the severe environmental conditions, which results in high operational, reliability and maintenance (O&M) costs, with the seabed turbine foundations (largely monopiles) accounting for over 25% of all lifecycle O&M costs, often caused by marine biofouling. Current methods of fouling prevention (dangerous: diver-deployed cleaning tools such as brushes and power jets) or ROVs (high annual costs ~ £30k/MW) are proving very costly and ineffective -- creating the need for an innovative solution to tackle this problem. The project will develop a fouling management system consisting of a mobile survey and cleaning robot that will eliminate the need for divers and ROVs. The robot will be placed on the turbine structure at sea level and will journey down below sea level to the work place. The robot will travel autonomously over the entire subsea monopile surface, imaging the fouling in real time. It will simultaneously activate its cleaning function at every fouled location and remove the fouling with an innovative guided power ultrasound technique. On returning to the sea surface the robot would simply be transported to the next turbine scheduled for treatment, and the cycle repeated. Overall O&M costs will be reduced by at least 50% compared with present diver/ROV techniques. This would mean a £7/MW (5%) reduction in LCOE.

The proposed project aims to develop an innovative BeeSave device to kill Varroa mites in beehives. The device uses a phase change material (PCM) pack. Research shows that Varroa mites can be killed during all development stages if they are exposed to temperatures ranging between 40°C to 47°C for ~ 150 minutes. These temperatures are safely tolerated by honey bee brood and adults and do not damage the honeycomb, which will be supplied by the integrated PCM pack installed in the beehives. The innovative system is compact, robust and low cost and does not require electricity. The technology is highly portable and simple to use, as heat is released by triggering the metal disk installed inside the device.

The UK is No. 1 in the world for installed offshore wind power and continues the deployment in a predominant speed in the next few decades to meet 2050 carbon emissions targets. The increasing sizes of offshore wind turbines pose significant challenges in the operation and maintenance of all its components. In particular, wind turbine pitch bearing, as the safety-critical interface between the turbine blade and the hub to rotate the blade for power generation optimisation and emergency stop, is typified as the large, slow, partially rotated bearing but it is the weak part and bottleneck for large offshore turbines (Emerging grand challenge). In addition, the UK will have a large number of onshore turbines approaching the end of their design life by 2030. The pitch bearing poses a significant risk for the decision making in ageing turbine decommissioning or life extension (Upcoming challenge). In-situ pitch bearings condition assessment is a major and open challenge for the whole wind industry as there are no industrial standards available yet and few existing in-situ methods, such as endoscopy and grease analysis, can only partially assess the pitch bearing conditions. Therefore, it is essential to develop effective in-situ condition assessment methods and tools in order to reduce high maintenance cost, unplanned downtime and risk of catastrophic failure, improve reliability and energy efficiency of onshore and offshore wind power generation and enable reliable decision making in ageing onshore wind turbine life extension. The ambitious research is, for the first time and at the international forefront, to develop intelligent pitch bearing condition assessment methods and in-situ tools using vibration and acoustic emission measurements. In particular, the research tackles the global grand challenges in wind industry by addressing the fundamentally technical challenges related to weak, noisy, and non-stationary data analysis for large slow speed bearings. This will be achieved by developing novel algorithms with sparse signal separation, data fusion and machine learning methods, followed by significant demonstration activities on both lab and real world operating environments. The PI has developed the first industrial-scale wind turbine pitch bearing platform including three naturally damaged bearings with over 15 years operating life in a real wind farm and advanced data collection instrument. The newly built platform lays a solid foundation for the proposed research and creates an ideal platform for carrying out demonstration and impact activities. The PI has also secured the unique opportunity to carry out field data collection and demonstration in real world operating wind farms under the strongest supports provided by two industrial project partners. The data collected from three naturally damaged bearings will be made publicly available under open-source licences to enable other researchers to carry out condition assessment for large slow speed bearings. The IP developed during the project will be protected. The developed algorithms will be made publicly available, if not conflicted with the IP. The successful outcome of this project will break new ground in in-situ pitch bearing condition assessment methods and tools, contribute to industrial standards of pitch bearings, and benefit a wide range of industries that use large slow speed bearings, such as offshore oil, gas, mining and steel making, over many decades of bearing service life. The novel methods with regard to weak, noisy and non-stationary data analysis can be used for wide data-driven applications. Therefore, the project has a significant, wide and long term impact in the next few decades.

The collaborative InSET4KTI project among two UK industries EnSO and CoolSky, one Kenyan industry, Eenovators, and one UK university, Brunel University London (BUL), aims to deliver a radically innovative compact solar thermal technology to harness Kenya’s vast solar resource to supply heating energy required in the Kenyan tea sector. Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) managed 67 tea factories are facing serious challenges to replace currently used wood fuel due to regulatory, economic and environmental requirements. The InSET4KTI solar technology is proposed as a cost effective and technologically viable solution. InSET4KTI project will design, manufacture and install a prototype solar field at KTDA’s Kagwe Tea Factory (KTF). A successful demonstration at KTF will enable rolling out solar thermal technology to all 67 KTDA factories providing a direct route to pass cost savings to 560,000 smallholder farmers who receive a bonus payment based upon the profitability of the tea catchment they supply – any reduction in the energy cost of tea production will therefore result in increased incomes to farmers. This grant will unleash an opportunity for solar heat technology in African and global tea industry, growing UK’s solar energy business.

Climate change and the 'energy trilemma' (sustainability, security, equity) are global challenges that effect us all, but most of all, the populations of developing countries. India in particular has a currently unsustainable energy system that causes extreme pollution, is unreliable and unaffordable for many average people. the Indian Government is working incredibly hard to address these challenges and has set an ambitious target to generate 57% of India's energy from renewables by 2027. This project aims to contribute to these target by developing a solar energy product that is low-cost to manufacture in terms of set up costs, materials and energy consumption. The project will use well understood printing processes to scale-up recent advances in perovskite photovoltaic (PV) research to produce prototype, building integrated solar energy products tested to industry standards. Working in collaboration with a leading UK company of building integrated photovoltaics and an Indian cleantech finance firm, the project will transfer the innovation to the context of India where it can be locally manufactured and deployed in accordance with the Indian Government initiative of 'Make in India'. It is the goal of the project to create one or more new ventures in India to complete the local supply-chain required to successfully bring the product to market, creating jobs and economic growth in the region.

CubeSats are small, standardised satellites consisting of one or multiple 10x10x10cm3 units, with ~1kg per unit. They play an increasingly important role in commercial spaceflight and are being considered for more and more commercial and scientific space missions, due to the low-cost and low-risk approach. The size and mass constraints of CubeSats generally put a limitation on the available area for solar arrays and therefore power generation capability. This in effect limits the types of applications that can be flown on CubeSats. A number of commercial applications require very high power for enabling new generations of payloads (Earth Observation or space-based Telecommunications) or for operational reasons (for pointing-towards-Earth sensors or cooling-from-Sun-heat devices). These missions currently have to fly on much larger satellites that can provide the needed power. A significant increase of power available to CubeSats will be a game-changer by enabling a whole new range of missions to fit into the CubeSat format, drastically reducing the risk and cost associated with these missions. This project aims to establish a design for a high power solar panel system which can be integrated onto the standardised CubeSat platforms. The project aims to build an engineering model of a solar panel and perform integrated testing with a CubeSat. The high power solar panel system will feature innovative solutions to increase the power generated by the panel, while maintaining the mass and size restrictions. Novel solar panels and mechanisms will be combined into one system to deliver a more than 60% increase in power generated on CubeSats compared to the current state-of-the-art.