Reports
Progress Report - Dec 2008
The award of £1million Strategic Research Development Grant from the Scottish Funding Council to MREDS Workpackage 5 has provided a major boost to the MREDS research programme. This award enables the appointment of 4 post-doctoral researchers – 2 at ICIT on Heriot-Watt University’s Orkney Campus, and 2 at the Environmental Research Institute (part of the UHI Millennium Institute), based in Thurso. At the start of the project the partners had appointed Dr Mark Shields, a benthic ecologist, at ERI and Dr Pandian Pitchai, a hydrodynamics specialist at ICIT. Mark and Pandian will now be joined by the two most recent appointments of Dr Eric Grist at ERI, and Dr Mike Bell at ICIT. A pdf version of the report of the SRDG and progress since its start is downloadable here.
Dr Will Sutton and Dr Kate Johnson have also recently joined the MREDS research team, in an honorary capacity, to assist with the development of Workpackages 2 and 6. We hope to formalise these honorary contributions.
Workpackage 5 is just one of the 6 MREDS workpackages that together provide a programme of research focussed on the following elements of marine renewables development:
- Export Constraints, Externalities & Opportunities
- Petroleum & Renewables
- Mitigation, Minimisation & Management of Risk
- Hydrodynamics, Moorings and Foundations
- Environmental and Ecological Impacts
- Socio-Economic Values and Responses
Workpackages 1 and 2 are starting preliminary work, with Dr Will Sutton now assisting in an honorary capacity and working closely with Professor Patrick Corbett on Workpackage 2.
In Workpackage 1 led by Dr Gareth Davies, Chair of OREF, proposals are being developed under the following strands:
- Strategic management - future models of energy resource distribution and demand and associated energy transport vectors
- Supply management – getting electricity from marine devices to the grid
- Grid management - maximising short term energy flows through the existing grid system
- Demand management – opportunities for short term increases in power demand near to resource rich areas and longer term market adaptations
- Alternatives - possible storage and transport mechanisms including hydrogen, gas hydrates etc
In Workpackage 2 Dr Will Sutton’s recent report on the “Offshore Petroleum and Offshore Renewables - Synergies and Opportunities” identifies:
valuable opportunities for knowledge transfer from petroleum to marine renewables;
- some limits to usefulness of cross-fertilisation;
- opportunities for future joint technology innovation; and
- particular challenges for Scottish marine renewables
Copies of this are available to MREDS sponsors. Patrick and Will have spent time networking with some oil sector companies, marine renewables technology developers, Scottish Government and agencies, and MSPs. They have also been promoting MREDS at conference events, Government advisory networks and during a study visit to Norway. A conference/workshop on main themes of oil sector/marine renewables engagement is planned for 2009. Professor Patrick Corbett has been invited to serve on the newly formed Green Energy Commission.
Workpackage 3 led by George Mermiris from Strathclyde University is developing a risk model for the marine renewables sector and a detailed research proposal for a JIP is circulating among other contributors to MREDS workpackages. George presented a paper describing his approach in “A risk-based decision-making framework for marine renewable energy installations” at the recent Marine Renewable Energy Conference, held on 19/20 November at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) in London.
Dr Rob Harris heads up Workpackage 4 and has recently moved from Heriot-Watt’s main University Campus in Edinburgh to join the research team at ICIT, taking on the role of MREDS Research Programme Director. He has been successful in the award of additional research funding from the EPSRC for a project, jointly with NAME (Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities), investigating the effect of unsteady flow on TEC rotors. A further EPSRC proposal on a novel method for the measurement of waves in strong tidal currents has recently been submitted.
In addition to the SRDG award developed collaboratively with the Environmental Research Institute (part of the UHI Millennium Institute) , researchers associated with Workpackages 5 & 6 have collaborated with 18 European Institutes in the submission of a proposal under the EU’s FP7 programme of research. The proposal called MESMA will look at a range of issues associated with spatially managed areas in the marine environment. These elements of spatial marine planning are of particular relevance as the marine renewables sector develops. Professor Jonathan Side, who leads Workpackage 5 with Dr Stuart Gibb, is also involved in the second phase of the EPSRC Supergen Marine programme, working jointly with Queen’s University Belfast on environmental aspects of wave and tidal development.
Dr Sandy Kerr, heading up Workpackage 6 has been collaborating with Professor Thorvald Gran at the University of Bergen in Norway, together with the University of Reykjavik and St John’s University, Newfoundland, working on a proposal to investigate the development of learning and innovation systems within the context of marine renewable energy development. Dr Kate Johnson, an ICIT alumna, has also joined the MREDS team in an honorary capacity and is currently working on a proposal to investigate the barriers to community engagement with renewable energy.
Summary of MREDS Spring-Board Research Proposals to date
Recent MREDS Research Proposals and Proposals under Development