Improving the efficiency of renewables
Driven by concerns about the rise in global warming, and the perceived dependency of developed countries on rapidly depleting oil resources located in unstable regions of the world, public opinion across the world, evidenced by opinion surveys, is showing powerful support for renewable energy such as wave and wind power.
The potential world-wide of wind power is said to be as much as five times the current total of energy production across the globe. To achieve this would require large scale wind farms with large numbers of wind turbines to be created in high wind areas. The areas with the most potential are off-shore where average wind speeds are on average 90% higher than on land.
Our work
We done extensive work in this field, developing technology to make these wind turbines become ‘intelligent structures’, making them more efficient and increasing the life of the structures, while reducing maintenance costs.
Also on the horizon and looking very promising is the development of systems to harness wave power. The areas with the most potential for this technology are western facing coastlines, in the latitudes from 40 to 60 degrees, and the UK has been estimated to have 55 TWh annually of usable wave energy resources.
We’ve been involved in designing and installing an operational load monitoring system on one of the leading projects in the UK, helping the team with evaluating the current system with future planning.
We have built, and are continuing to build, a depth of expertise in renewables and are looking forward to further projects to extend the range of our innovations.
