The University of Strathclyde is creating a Doctoral Training Centre to train the next generation of wind energy engineers. The UK’s wind industry faces a severe shortage of skilled engineers, a bottleneck that threatens to limit the country’s ability to meet its renewable energy targets. Without a dramatic increase in trained specialists, the projected growth of the sector will stall. This centre brings together expertise in everything from rotor aerodynamics and turbine control to power conversion and grid integration, all on a single site. Students will have access to the latest wind turbine design software and power system modelling tools. The goal is to build a critical mass of researchers that puts the UK on par with leading wind energy centres in Denmark, the US, Germany, and the Netherlands. If successful, the centre will supply the engineers needed to design, build, and maintain the wind farms that keep the UK’s electricity grid running. It is a direct response to a practical workforce crisis, not a fundamental science project.
View original technical description
This proposal is to establish a DTC in Wind Energy Systems at the University of Strathclyde. This will bring together staff at Strathclyde with in-depth expertise covering the wind resource, rotor aerodynamics, wind turbine structural analysis, turbine control, power conversion, condition monitoring, and electrical network integration issues to create a Centre of learning and research with strong links to the wind industry that will provide a stimulating environment for the PhD students. The Centre will be accommodated in space within the Royal College Building refurbished with the requirements of the DTC specifically in mind. The latest wind turbine design modelling software will be made available to students alongside a wide range of power system and computation modelling packages. The wider aim, drawing on links to an expected strong ETI funded research activity, is to create a centre, with the DTC at is core, that is internationally leading in wind energy systems technology and on a par with the centres in Denmark, the USA, Germany and the Netherlands. To meet the interdisciplinary research demands of the wind industry a substantial centre bringing together all the relevant skills on a single site is essential. This requires a critical mass of staff and early stage researchers of the sort that this proposal would deliver. It is also clear from Government and other reports that the projected growth of the wind industry in the UK, and elsewhere, will be limited by a severe shortage of skilled engineers unless the universities dramatically increase the scale of their activities in this area.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know