Scottish wind turbine scientists will be lending their expertise to a
project aimed at developing better ways to store renewable energy.
SPIRE 2 is a £6 million cross-border initiative in the UK being funded by
the EU’s INTERREG VA programme, led by Ulster University.
A University of Strathclyde team, led by Professor Margaret Stack, has now
been awarded £1.1 million to recruit five PhD researchers to study erosion
and corrosion of wind and tidal turbines.
Strathclyde has unique erosion and wear testing facilities, which are
specifically focused on climatic evaluation for wind turbine structures.
Prof Stack said: “Wear, erosion and corrosion of materials and surface
coatings can limit the performance of renewable energy devices and
ultimately energy efficiency.
“The research findings from this project will provide a road map of
performance based on laboratory simulation of materials degradation from
experimental testing and computational modelling which will inform energy
storage models as part of the overall SPIRE 2 project.”
University of Strathclyde scientists were the first to link the use of
weather maps for materials testing for wind turbines and also recently
completed a tidal turbine erosion project.
This cross-border scheme aims to develop a range of consumer-owned energy
storage devices to help meet current and future electricity market needs.
It follows the UK Government’s announcement of a complete transformation of
how energy will be generated, stored and used in future.
Prof Neil Hewitt, of Ulster University, said: “Within SPIRE 2, the role of
Strathclyde in understanding of long term weather-related impacts on the
performance of wind and marine renewable energy systems is very important.
“Ulster University and the rest of the partners look forward to working
with Strathclyde as they bring immense expertise in life-time performance
of wind and marine energy systems.”
1 Comment
Ian Miller · August 8, 2017 at 9:32 pm
Assuming a generous 50% energy transfer efficiency from Turbine generated electricity to battery storage, the current UK number of turbines at 7,600 working only 30% of the time, to reach full blown 24/7 cover would theoretically require to be increased to the region of 45,600 turbines to cover our already saturated landscape.
To further power heating and transport, multiply the 45,600 by at least a factor of ’10’. This would mean our entire UK land surface would require to host around 1/2 a million turbines.
The people of Britain will simply not have it ! They will not put up with it, nor will they accept war-time levels of energy rationing through smart metering designed to limit our energy use ostensibly to ‘save the planet’ when computer modelled Global Warming climate alarmist projections time and again fail to materialise. Furthermore, Comparing the cost with Gas Powered Energy until Small Modular Reactors search is complete, these Wind Turbines requiring replacement every 12 – 24 years, will prove to be beyond even being prohibitively expensive.
Its high time We stopped the charade NOW; for that’s all it is.