The ETP Advisory Group held its latest meeting in April 2010, co-chaired by Ian Marchant (CEO of Scottish and Southern Energy) and Prof. Anne Glover (Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland). The Advisory Group, which comprises senior industry and public sector agency representatives from across Scotland, provides strategic advice and support in relation to key business and policy drivers.

Main agenda items for the meeting were; presentation from Dr David Clarke on the role and activities of the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and ETP Business Plan, 2010-2011.

 

General information on the development of the ETP

Main activities since the last newsletter under ETP's four Strategic Objectives:-

• Capacity Building;
• Relationship Building;
• Internationalisation;
• Economic Impact.

Capacity Building - "Deepening and broadening existing relationships and partnerships (within the ETP) to promote increased collaboration."

Focus is to increase research capacity and collaboration between ETP member universities and to foster greater levels of awareness, ownership and sense of belonging to this newly established partnership. Developing this strong internal capacity has been a pre-requisite to the credible and successful external promotion of the ‘ETP Brand’ to industry, other researchers etc.

• Congratulations to Prof Peter Cameron for his recent appointment as Director of the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP) at the University of Dundee;

•  Welcome to Professor Tooraj Jamasb as Professor in Energy Economics at Heriot-Watt University. His research interests are Innovation and Technology and he has had prior success in Cambridge by adding an economics component to EPSRC-type calls;

• Welcome also to Prof. Jon Gibbins who has joined the University of Edinburgh from Imperial College to take up a professorship in power plant engineering and carbon capture at the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage. His expertise centres on research, teaching, and policy advice for Carbon Capture and Storage.

Relationship Building - "Promoting the expertise and capabilities within the ETP, to develop new strategic relationships with industry, academia and others."

Objective has been to develop and deepen relationships between ETP and industry, academia etc.through promoting the existence and potential benefits of working with the ETP.

•  Work is ongoing to develop a ‘Scottish Energy Laboratory’ that will provide a means of promoting the considerable energy-related test and demonstration facilities across the university and industry sectors in Scotland. A meeting in April 2010 brought together, for the first time, the Directors/Managers of many of these facilities along with representatives from key public sector bodies;

• Several ETP universities held discussions with Converteam who were seeking to locate an Advanced Technology Centre in the UK to develop novel electrical machines and power electronic control systems for the renewable energy sector. This was a successful outcome for ETP with the University of Edinburgh subsequently being selected;

• ETP's Programme Partner, the Scottish European Green Energy Centre (SEGEC) has now appointed a full team; Gina Ford (Office Manager and PA to Duncan Botting); Mark Elliott (Finance and Funding Manager);     Ellie Jones (Marketing and Communications Manager); Ross Loveridge (Thematic Manager – CCS,  seconded from Scottish Government); Jamie Robinson (Thematic Manager – Renewable Heat); Jonathan Leucci (Thematic Manager – Grids); Tim Hurst (Thematic Manager – Marine);  

• News from ETP's other Programme Partner, University of Highlands and Islands (UHI). The Stornoway-based Greenspace Research group at Lews Castle College UHI has just moved into its new Energy Visualisation and Simulation Laboratory. The facility will be used to support low carbon and renewable energy research  including built environment energy performance, marine, wind and hydrogen projects;

• The Hebridean Energy Future Conference will be held in Stornoway, on the 29th and 30th June, jointly organized by Lews Castle College, the North of Scotland  Industry Group, and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. This will cover topics ranging from EU Framework 7 research projects, Island Economies, renewable energy development potential, workshops and a programme of site visits.For registration or more information, contact angela.wilson@nsig.co.uk;

• The Scottish Universities Physics Research Alliance (SUPA) has recently established Energy as one of its key theme areas. ETP is working with SUPA to identify areas of mutual interest with opportunities for collaboration;

• ETP is carrying out a collaborative piece of work with the Telford Institute (civil engineering) and SUPA to map out the nuclear related R&D capabilities in Scotland and consider opportunities for joint partnerships and funding bids;

• ETP will have a stand at the All Energy Conference in Aberdeen from 19-20 May 2010. This is an excellent opportunity for ETP to promote its capabilities and develop new relationships with industry. 

 

Internationalisation - "Projecting the scale and expertise of the ETP on the international stage in order to promote new outreach and knowledge exchange opportunities."

 

    

Four main focus areas have been identified (working with SDI and others) for pro-active international activity - India; China; US and Europe. These have been selected for their potential to develop long term sustainable partnerships that will deliver value to ETP and Scotland.

• Four ETP representatives supported the development of an ‘India-Scotland Energy Research Collaborative’  at an Indo-Scottish workshop and international energy conference hosted by IIT Bombay in December ’09. The first working group meeting of the Collaborative subsequently met in New Dehli in January 2010 where the expertise of ETP was presented to the Indian Minisitry of New and Renewable Energy and four key focus areas agreed for collaboration; wind energy, smart grids, energy efficient buildingst, bio-energy/fuels. A technical delegation from the Indian Ministry is visiting Scotland w/b 17 May with a particlar focus on offshore wind energy collaboration;

• Discussions are ongoing with representatives from Northern Ireland and Ireland to consider the establishment of a 'Tri-Partite Energy Research Collaboration' with ETP representing the Scottish energy research community;

• On May 13th and 14th, The University of Edinburgh will be hosting the 3rd annual Plenary meeting of the International Electrotechnical Commission's Technical Committee on Marine Energy (TC114), jointly sponsored by The University, The Scottish Government and the EquiMar project. TC114 is developing international standards for ocean energy conversion including wave, hydro-kinetic and ocean thermal;

• Edinburgh Napier University and City University, Hong Kong announced on 28 Janaury that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form a partnership to establish Hong Kong's first Biofuel Research Centre.  The focus of the Centre is on research and development of renewable energy via second generation biofuels from a diverse range of non-food crops and waste matter;

• David Ingram and Henry Jeffrey from the University of Edinburgh were invited to participate in the 3rd Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference conference held in Seattle.Additionally David presented the EquiMar project and Henry SuperGen MARINE. The Conference was organised by the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, a USA trade body, and was co-sponsored by Scottish Development International. The meeting was very successful and show-cased ETP Research; 

• Presentations on ETP have been made to a number of international guest delegations hosted by SDI to support inward investment opportunities where the ETP is an important element of the overall 'Scottish proposition'.
  

Economic Impact - "Connecting the work of the ETP with Scottish Policy and economic development opportunities for Scotland."

• ETP has been successful in its bid for establishing a new Energy Industry Doctorate Programme as part of an overall Scottish Energy Research Academy. This £4 million programme will initially produce 50 students that will be augmented by a further 50 in a second phase to deliver a total of over 100 Energy Industry Doctorates in Renewable Energy Technologies over five years. The first group of 30 students will start in October 2010. ETP is actively seeking companies to participate in the programme, so please contact us if you are interested in being part of this exciting new programme;

• ETP Business Plan is in final draft form and will be reviewed by ETP's Advisory Group at its next meeting on 30 April 2010. The plan currently has 12 main elements for future activity;

1. Position ETP as a Key Thematic Pool;
2. Establish Energy Theme Leadership;
3. SWOT analysis across selected other technology areas;
4. Develop Knowledge Exchange Plan;
5. Develop and implement Technology Alliances;
6. Design and deliver Scottish Energy Research Academy;
7. Design and deliver Studentship Programme;
8. Design and deliver Scottish Energy Laboratory;
9. Develop relationships with key international partners;
10. ETP communications, promotion and engagement plan;
11. Plan and deliver ETP annual conference;
12. Relationship management with industry and others.

Please contact us if you would like more information on any of the above.

Some of the success stories across the ETP

•   Researchers at Glasgow University have been funded by the EC for the project "Generate Renewable Energy Efficiently using Nanofabricated Silicon (GREEN Silicon)". It is a 2.2 MEuro project under the EC ICT FET Proactive Initiative on "Towards Zero Power ICT" with the aim of using nanostructure Si/SiGe heterostructures to produce more efficient thermoelectric energy harvesting solutions to self-power small sensors. Glasgow is the co-ordinator along with L-NESS, Como, Italy; University of Linz, Austria; and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Contact Douglas Paul for more information;

• FP7 MARINA Project. The University of Edinburgh is one of the largest partners in a recently announced £10m FP7 Project "MARINA_Platform" which is investigating and evaluating the use of combined deep water ocean energy platforms which hybridise, for example, offshore wind and wave into the same platform.  Edinburgh's work  is in two areas (1) develop a Europe wide combined wind, wave and tidal energy resource atlas built into a GIS based marine spatial planning decision support tool and (2) consider appropriate power generation, conversion and power electronics for combined ocean energy platforms in order to save costs by sharing as much of the electrical infrastructure as possible between the wind and marine generation systems;

• The Centre of Petroleum, Energy Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP) at the University of Dundee has recently won two large research projects; one a project to design an internet based source book of 'best practice' in the international petroleum and mining industries, funded by the World Bank for a 2-3 year period (about 1.5 million US$), working with the Universities of Witwatersrand in South Africa and Queensland, Australia; and a second with the European Commission under its FP7 programme, involving ten institutions and funded over 3 years to the tune of 2.7 million Euros (Competition and Collaboration in Access to Energy Resources). In both cases, Dundee is the lead contractor;

• NGenTec Spun Out. A radical new design of electrical generator that solves an engineering quandary and promises to be cheaper, lighter and more reliable than anything currently available has been developed by staff at the Institute of Energy Systems at the University of Edinburgh. The work by Drs Markus Mueller and Alasdair McDonald has solved one of the fundamental engineering problems faced by builders of offshore wind turbines. A new company, NGenTec, was formed to exploit the new design and is seeking to raise £4.5m first round investment to scale up the technology to the MW level. The new design uses a novel arrangement of rotor permanent magnets and stator coils to reduce the weight of direct-drive generators by up to half and makes assembly much easier;

• Congratulations to Smarter Grid Solutions (University of Strathclyde spin-out company) for winning the Best New Business and Best Renewable Innovation Award at the prestigious Green Energy Award event. This was followed by an award of £75,000 by the Department of Energy and Climate Change as part of the Smart Grid Grants Programme;

• The Strathclyde engineers behind a pioneering tidal power device have been recognised at the prestigious Energy Institute Awards. Cameron Johnstone and colleagues from the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Energy Systems Research Unit, received the Technology Award for their contra-rotating marine current turbine - a device that makes it possible to harness energy anywhere from the 8-500m depths of the sea, including where the current is at its strongest;

• The University of Edinburgh has been awarded funds by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for a £1.3m project to assemble the necessary new knowledge of three dimensional wave-current properties, through a complex programme of laboratory and numerical testing. In addition, the project will produce prototypes for the world’s first digitally controlled wave-current generators capable of being installed in the next generation of laboratory test facilities;

• University of Glasgow's Department of Aerospace Engineering has for many years been involved in the aerodynamics of wind turbines, wind tunnel testing and performance modelling. At present the Department is testing a novel vertical exis wind turbine design in their Argyll wind tunnel. The basic data collected are wind speed, torque and rpm thus permitting the development of power coefficient against tip-speed-ratio and power verses wind speed;

• The University of St Andrews and the Hydrogen Office have recently been awarded an ERDF grant to facilitate the development of a Research Centre for energy storage.  They will work with The Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, Lews Castle College (UHI) and Strathclyde University to drive research and development leading to system optimisation and system/component market proving.  The consortium will work together to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer within the hydrogen and fuel cell community (H&FCC) and between the H&FCC and key stakeholders, with the aim of improving stakeholder understanding, and accelerating the commercialisation and uptake of these emerging technologies;

• Energy Technology Institute (ETI) Projects. ETP universities continue to be successful as Programme Partners in another two ETI projects (building on the success of two wind energy related projects).

1. The University of Edinburgh is partner in the “PeraWatt” programme which will develop and validate numerical models to predict the performance of wave and tidal stream generator arrays. The University is responsible the development of numerical models of individual tidal turbines and of arrays and will also conduct 1/10th scale field studies at the SuperGen test site in Strangford Narrows to support the verification of these models;
2. ReDAPT - Led by Rolls Royce, this will involve the installation of an innovative tidal generator with comprehensive data collection system at EMEC.  The University of Edinburgh is responsible for the measurement and determination of flow structure, especially turbulence. This will involve the development of sophisticated parametric models of the flow environment and calibration of these models using a cutting edge array of the world’s most sophisticated flow measurement devices. Evaluation of such flow conditions will support the development of future generations of tidal technology;

• The EPSRC SuperGen FlexNet, HiDEF and AMPerES consortia hosted the Smart Grids Research Symposium at the University of Strathclyde in April.  Leading academics from the UK in the smart grids area presented on a range of topics and gave insights into the research in these consortia and the wider smart grids community. Presentations from the event can be found here. 

• The UK CCS Community Network (UKCCSC) hosted the first of biannual meetings on 30-31 March 2010 to bring together all fields of CCS research in addition to relevant government and industry. One hundred delegates attended the meeting, held at the University of Edinburgh. Presentations can be found here on the UKCCSC website. 

Selection of energy related funding opportunities

Thanks as ever to Dr Jeff Hardy at UKERC/NERN for identifying most of these opportunities. UKERC has an excellent summary of energy related funding on its web-site.

Some funding opportunities of particular interest to ETP Members are shown below.

Call for the new SUPERGEN Power Networks ‘Hub’

The Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme is looking to support a Power Networks SUPERGEN ‘Hub’. The principal investigator (PI) of this Hub will act as Power Networks ‘Champion’ taking research in power networks forward to meet the UK’s future power network requirements. There is up to £4 million available for this call, and the duration of the grant will be for five years. Closing date 26 May 2010.

Newton Scholarships

The UK Government is investing £2.5 million in the UK’s first Scholarship scheme designed to target, recruit and retain the world’s best research students, Lord Mandelson announced. The Newton Scholarships will provide £25,000 support for the 100 best candidates wanting to study at postgraduate level in the UK. This scheme will help provide the economy with the most talented and highly skilled graduates it needs to achieve growth in future industries.

Technology Strategy Board (TSB) has announced a number of new energy-related funding streams;

    * £17million investment to Test Low Carbon Building Technology;
    * £7 million Investment into Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies ;
    * Wave and Tidal Stream Energy Technologies: Reducing Costs and Improving Performance
 
Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) Request for Proposals - Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS)

Following an extensive analysis of likely future UK requirements for CCS new build and retrofit power generation, the ETI has identified a specific opportunity to develop capture technology for new-build, pre-combustion capture coal based on physical separation of CO2 from synthesis gas.  A two-stage bidding and selection process will be used, with a deadline of 23 June 2010 for Stage 1 proposals.    

 Energy-related information of a more general interest

Funding for Design Studies in Clean Coal Competition

Funding was awarded to E.ON and ScottishPower for design and development studies as part of the competition to build one of the world’s first commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration plants. This will support Front End Engineering and Design studies, which will enable the bidders to further their designs for the projects at Kingsnorth and Longannet respectively. These studies involve detailed engineering and design work and will be completed within twelve months, after which the final competition winner will be selected. This is one of the first set of studies of end-to-end commercial scale CCS on coal power plant in the world and will be used by project developers to examine and refine initial plans and reduce technical risk, so that more detailed project plans can be drawn-up and costed.

Technology and Innovation Centres

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson announced Government support for the development of a network of technology and innovation centres that will help deliver the industries and jobs of the future. The announcement came as he accepted the recommendations of a [report] by technology entrepreneur Hermann Hauser, commissioned to conduct a review into how the UK could learn from other countries’ innovation networks. The elite group of centres will help commercialise the output of the UK’s world leading research and will drive economic growth in potential high growth sectors that will emerge from commercialising technologies such as renewable energy and climate change.
  

New Scottish Government Energy Publications

The Scottish Government has published several significant energy related reports in the past few months;

• Towards a Low Carbon Economy for Scotland: Discussion Paper [Report]

This discussion paper sets out the Scottish Government’s plans to move towards a low carbon economy in Scotland, as part of the overarching Government Economic Strategy.  It identifies the key dimensions of a transition strategy towards a low carbon economy, describes our approach and timeframe to develop the strategy and seeks to engage key stakeholders in the strategy process.

• Carbon Capture and Storage - A Roadmap for Scotland [Report]

Document on how Scotland can be at the forefront of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology

• Renewables Action Plan Update [Report]

• The Employment Potential of Scotland's Hydro Research [Report]

A study into the jobs potential from hydro, following on from a previous study for Forum for Renewable Energy Development in Scotland (FREDS).

•  Renewables Obligation (Scotland) - Scottish Government Consultation Response [Report]

The Scottish Government's response to its recent consultation on changes to the Renewables Obligation (Scotland) Order 2009, and its final proposals for amendments to that Order.

• Joint Evaluation of the Scottish Biomass Support Scheme and the Renewable Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Support Scheme [Report]

The purpose of this evaluation was to assess the strategic outcomes and impacts of the Scottish Biomass Support Scheme (SBSS) and the Renewable Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Support Scheme (RHFCSS). Both of these grant schemes were initiated by the Scottish Government in 2006 with financial expenditure required by end of March 2008.

• Scotland's Generation Advantage [Report]

This report examines the scope, benefits and attractiveness of the various low carbon generation technologies available to Scotland, seeking to identlfy which sources are likely to benefit from a comparative advantage in the country and therefore highlight those technologies that will be vital to the achievement of energy policy imperatives.

• Energy - Taking Forward our National Conversation [Report]

National Conversation paper on Energy

• Conserve and Save: A Consultation on the Energy Efficiency Action Plan for Scotland [Report]

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act commits the Scottish Government to prepare and publish a plan for a) promoting energy efficiency; and b) improving the energy efficiency of living accommodation. Each chapter of consultation in pdf format.

• Conserve and Save: A Consultation on the Energy Efficiency Action Plan for Scotland [Report]

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act commits the Scottish Government to prepare and publish a plan for a) promoting energy efficiency; and b) improving the energy efficiency of living accommodation. This consultation document sets out a comprehensive approach to energy efficiency by the Scottish Government and the public sector in Scotland, focusing on its impact on energy and economic development, housing and transport and on the role it can play in delivering climate change targets.