Control engineers are designing smarter controllers to make everything from car engines to power grids run cleaner and more efficiently. This matters because many existing control systems—the automated decision-makers that manage dynamic processes—were not built for today’s challenges: integrating intermittent wind power into the grid, cutting fuel use in congested airspace, or squeezing more efficiency from internal combustion engines. Current techniques struggle with the complexity and uncertainty inherent in these systems. The gap is that control theory has not yet been adapted to handle the specific demands of renewable energy and ultra-efficient transport at scale. If successful, this programme could produce new control algorithms that allow wind farms to feed power reliably into local networks despite random supply fluctuations, and that optimise engine management and vehicle aerodynamics for a future generation of fuel-efficient road vehicles. In aviation, better air traffic management schemes could reduce the fuel burned during congestion. These are not consumer-facing changes—they quietly improve the infrastructure that keeps electricity flowing and goods moving, while cutting carbon emissions. The work is applied engineering, not fundamental science, and its impacts will be measured in reduced emissions and improved system reliability.
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Control engineering is concerned with the design of control systems (controllers) that can improve the performance of all dynamic processes. Relevant examples include the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from internal combustion engines and power plant, the reduction of pollutants generated by chemical plants, and improvements in a power system's ability to respond to random load and/or supply variations. New technologies for clean electricity generation, fuel efficient transport, and environmentally friendly waste disposal will all depend on a new generation of special-purpose control systems. Current research trends in control engineering, which address complexity and uncertainty, have a great, and as yet unrealised potential to contribute to these technologies.The aim of this research programme is to develop new control engineering techniques which can be applied to a number of energy and sustainability related problems in order to achieve significantadvances in the exploitation of renewable energy and vehicle fuel efficiency. The clean energy aspect of the programme will address major challenges arising from distributed renewable generation, taking account of the integration of wind power into a network, transmission, local network control, and random intermittency of supply. In transport, our goals are to develop new technologies for a future generation of fuel efficient road vehicles (focusing attention on engine management, and aerodynamic and vehicle design optimisation) and to devise new air traffic management schemes to reduce fuel consumption of aircraft resulting from air traffic congestion.
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