2nd PRIMaRE Summer School

2nd PRIMaRE Summer School

The 2nd PRIMaRE Summer School, entitled "Designing Marine Renewable Energy Devices" took place at the University of Bristol and the University of Bath from the 9th-13th September 2019.

The event provided a unique opportunity for around 40 participants, including PhD students, early career researchers and industrialists to learn from experts in the sector on designing marine renewable energy devices. A range of group activities were also organised to encourage participants to share their research interests and identify potential partnerships. These included a Funding Pitch Competition, judged by Simon Cheeseman, who manages the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s marine renewables strategy. It is hoped that participants will now use PRIMaRE's range of funding schemes to build on the contacts made at the summer school and develop future research collaborations.

Details of the invited speakers and copies of all presentations from the summer school can be found below.


Invited Speakers

Development of an Innovative Tidal Stream Energy Device

Joe Hussey, Instream Energy Systems

Joe Hussey, Instream Energy Systems

Joe Hussey is the UK Engineering Manager at Instream Energy Systems, as well as an independent consultant providing specialist support to wave & tidal technology and project developers. He has a diverse range of experience in the development of renewable energy projects and engineering design spanning 20 years. Joe is a chartered mechanical engineer with a background in automation systems design but has spent most of his career in offshore renewables project development, and providing R&D and technical consultancy services to wave, tidal, and offshore wind projects in the UK, Europe, US and the Asia Pacific region.

The Design Process for Marine Energy Devices

Tim Warren, Blackfish Engineering Design Ltd

Tim Warren, Blackfish Engineering Design Ltd

Tim is a design engineer with 19 years’ experience in the aerospace and tidal energy industries. He has detailed knowledge of a wide variety of engineering topics, including composites, gearboxes, bearings, electric motor control, corrosion, lubrication, instrumentation and metal fabrication. He also has wide experience of systems integration, managing suppliers, and schedule, resource and budget planning. Within the tidal energy industry, he has played a leading role in the design, analysis, manufacture and testing of 2 successful tidal stream turbines (500kW and 1MW rated power). During these projects, he was the lead engineer for composite blades, pitch control mechanisms, hub and nacelle structures, shafts, bearings, clamping mechanisms, hydraulic power pack and corrosion protection.

Innovation in Offshore Marine Energy

Simon Cheeseman, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult

Simon Cheeseman, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult

Simon is an experienced engineer and programme manager, having worked in both the commercial and public sectors.

Working within the ORE Catapult’s Research and Innovation directorate Simon is responsible for managing the Catapult’s marine renewables strategy and developing the Catapult’s portfolio of Wave & Tidal projects and support tools. During his career Simon has held various programme manager roles with responsibility for a range of high value aerospace, communications and marine renewables technology development projects.

Geophysical Survey Techniques for Marine Renewables

William Hodshon, Lloyd’s Register

William Hodshon, Lloyd’s Register

Will completed his BSc in Geology in 1999 and has worked for the past 20 years with various companies all over the world, in the field of marine geoscience supporting predominantly site investigations. Will is now one of Lloyd Register’s senior staff geoscientists, Will acts as both a senior consultant and project manager on numerous major offshore survey projects in a variety of sectors including: offshore wind, wave energy, oil and gas and submarine cables. In his consultant capacity Will frequently takes responsibility of a project from conception to completion, undertaking the initial desk studies through to survey design / specification, data quality control, interpretation and finally the 3D ground model development.

Offshore Foundation Types & Installation

Peter Clutterbuck

Peter Clutterbuck

Peter is a Civil Engineer who has specialised in Marine Works. As Construction Director for Seacore, a Cornish marine contractor, he was responsible for developing effective operating methods based on the company expertise in jack-up plant operation and drilling for marine construction projects. These projects included ferry jetties, bridge foundations, outfall risers (sewage and cooling water) and foundations for marine renewable energy projects. These latter projects included some of the very early demonstrations of the use of steel monopiles for wind and tidal works at Boksigen, Blyth, North Hoyle and the MCT turbines at Lynmouth & Strangford Lough. He now operates as a Marine Construction Consultant.

Meygen Case Study

Jeremy Thake, SIMEC Atlantis Energy

Jeremy Thake, SIMEC Atlantis Energy

Jeremy serves as Head of Engineering at SIMEC Atlantis Energy. He has extensive experience of engineering management, new product design, prototype development and project management. He has been working in tidal energy since 1998, and has played a major role in the development of four different tidal turbines for IT Power, Marine Current Turbines and Tidal Generation Limited, before joining Atlantis.

As one of the first people working in tidal energy, he has been involved with all aspects of this work: marine resource studies, tidal modeling, site surveys, site permissions. He was part of the IEC tidal performance measurement standard committee, and has worked internationally on numerous collaborative projects. He is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer and Fellow of the IMechE, with degrees in Engineering Science from Oxford University and in Agricultural Engineering from Cranfield Institute of Technology.

Wave Variability & Wave Power – issues for power output and machine survivability

Paul Taylor, University of Western Australia

Paul Taylor, University of Western Australia

Paul worked for Shell on safety related topics for chemical process plant and then offshore structures. He then moved to the University of Oxford where he spent 20 years teaching mathematics, mechanics and the theory of structures in the Department of Engineering Science. His research interests include physics and statistics of waves in the sea, wave-structure interaction and latterly aspects of wave power. This research has continued with a move two years ago to the Oceans Graduate School at the University of Western Australia.

Environmental Impacts and Monitoring of Marine Renewable Energy Devices

Benjamin Williamson, University of the Highlands and Islands

Benjamin Williamson, University of the Highlands and Islands

Benjamin is a marine engineer with research interests including robotics, sensor fusion and the environmental effects of marine renewable energy devices. He is Lead Scientist at the Environmental Research Institute, UHI. Since 2011, he has developed novel monitoring platforms for wave and tidal stream energy sites to measure interactions of fish, seabirds and marine mammals with wave and tidal energy devices. He has a keen interest in novel sensor platforms to investigate biophysical interactions in the marine environment, such as using UAVs to investigate behavioural associations of top predators with fine-scale hydrodynamic surface features at tidal stream energy sites.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

This project has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grant agreement EP/P026109/1