What Faculty do you work in?
I work in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, specifically in the mechanical engineering department; I’m based in the ESRI building on the Bay Campus.
What is your main area of research?
The main focus of my research has been on tidal stream energy – that is, generating electricity from tidal currents using devices that work on the same principles as wind turbines, rather than using height differences like a tidal barrage or lagoon. The tidal currents that power devices like this are predictable in terms of the when they’ll arrive and roughly how fast they’ll be, but there’s a lot of variation on top of this due to random turbulent fluctuations and due to wave action which is less predictable. I’m interested in measuring how much the turbulence and waves affect the current, and predicting how they will affect the turbines.
Why is your research important?
We already know that it’s possible to generate electricity from tidal currents – this has been done in the UK, France and the Faroe Islands, and there’s currently about 10MW of working tidal stream capacity around the world that’s supplying power to the grid. Tidal power has one big advantage over wind power in that it’s much more predictable; however, to reach anywhere near the scale of wind power deployment that we’ve seen we need to overcome a very important engineering challenge: it’s much harder to deploy and maintain a turbine underwater than in the air!
This means that, compared to a wind turbine, it’s worthwhile to design a tidal turbine to be more robust so that it needs less maintenance, even if that means that it’s relatively more expensive for the initial build. Understanding the fluctuating loads due to turbulence and waves is critical for predicting how often maintenance will be required, and which components will need frequent attention.
What SDG is your research most closely aligned with?
My research is very well-aligned with SDG 7 – affordable and clean energy. However, especially when working with industrial partners my work is also relevant to SDG 9 – industry, innovation and infrastructure.
What do you hope to accomplish with your research?
I hope that my research will play a part in bringing in tidal stream energy as a significant contributor to net-zero energy generation – there are a lot of strands that need to be brought together for this to happen, and the work we do at Swansea can be an important part of it.
Is there a cross-disciplinary element to your research? If so, who else at the University is involved?
My own work is mostly simulation and data analysis, but I work closely with researchers at the university who do more work in the field such as Professor Ian Masters or Dr. Tom Lake. A lot of my collaboration with other fields has involved colleagues outside of Swansea.
Are there any external collaborators involved?
I’ve worked extensively with collaborators outside Swansea during my career, including research institutes and industrial partners. For instance, I’ve worked with researchers at the University of Normandy and the French marine research institute Ifremer to test scale-model turbines in their flume in Boulogne; with the University of Algarve to field-test a quarter-scale turbine in the Ria Formosa Lagoon; and I’m currently collaborating with a colleague from the University of Nagasaki to analyse tidal resource in the Goto Islands in southwest Japan.
A lot of my work has relied on good relations with industrial partners as well; collaboration with real tidal turbine developers is the best way to get data on a full-scale, real tidal stream deployment.
What is next for your research?
I’m currently working on a series of short-term collaborations with local enterprises to develop the supply chain for offshore energy – particularly floating offshore wind. I’m also putting together a proposal to use an autonomous drone boat to measure turbulence at different locations around a tidal stream site in order to investigate the balance of turbulence production and dissipation.