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Renewable power is one of the main drives to achieve carbon reduction and net-zero, and to meet the ambitious climate goals. In particular, offshore wind power in Europe has been developing at a rapid pace in recent years. Multi-Giga watts offshore wind farms with larger wind turbine power ratings, floating wind turbines installed in deeper water areas, and higher ratio of renewables integrated to existing power grids, are fundamentally changing power system operations and bringing new challenges and technical demands. This industry-doctorate consortium, ADOreD, will recruit and train 15 Researchers by collaborating with 19 academic and industrial organisations. It aims to tackle the academic and technical challenges in the areas of transmission of offshore wind power to the AC grid by using power electronics-based AC/DC technologies. In doing so, it will equip the Researchers, through their PhD studies, with essential knowledge and skills to face fast energy transition in their future careers. The project covers 3 key research aspects: offshore wind (including wind turbines, wind power collection, and wind farm design and control); DC technologies (including AC/DC converters, HVDC control and DC network operation and protection); and AC grid (including stability and control of AC grids dominated with converters under various control modes. The ADOreD consortium has excellent coverage of academic universities and industry organisations including manufacturers, energy utilities, system operators, consultancy and technology innovation centres. All the research questions in the project reflect industry needs; academic novelty and innovation will be reflected in the methodologies and solutions; and the research results will be disseminated directly to the industry partners' products, grid operation and services. The outcomes of the project are both technologies and a talent pool to accelerate the deployment and grid integration of large-scale offshore wind power.

The ModConFlex consortium comprises a group of 10 academics and 4 senior researchers in industry (ORE Catapult) with expertise in control theory, artificial intelligence, complex dynamical systems, distributed parameter systems, fluid dynamics, aeroelasticity, power electronics, power systems, swimming theory and marine engineering. Our aim is to train the next generation of researchers on the modelling and control of flexible structures interacting with fluids (water and air), contributing to the latest advances in control theory, artificial intelligence and energy-based modelling. Our main applications are in the control of floating wind turbines (the prime renewable energy source of the future), and in the control of highly flexible aircraft, aircraft with very high aspect ratio. Our research plans are organized into three scientific work packages, which cover mathematical systems theory (modelling and model reduction, boundary control systems, port-Hamiltonian systems, exact beam theory), relevant aspects of control theory (internal model controllers with anti-windup, nonlinear model predictive control, robust control), reinforcement learning, aeroelasticity, stochastic algorithms. We believe that science and technology in Europe will greatly benefit from this research, and from the education and knowledge that we will impart to a new generation of researchers. Key strengths of this consortium include a research environment that brings together mathematicians and engineers to provide the project's young researchers with a unique training environment, and a network of associated industrial partners that will allow all the young researchers to participate in industrial secondments. We have the critical mass to cover all aspects of training, and we have an excellent track record of past collaboration and of training young researchers.

This prosperity partnership project, UNITE, brings Fugro Ltd, a major Tier 1 offshore service provider, together with a world-leading robotics research team from Heriot-Watt University and Imperial College London to address key open research challenges for safe and robust robotic solutions in the offshore renewable sector. It specifically focuses on the development and deployment of perception-enabled, risk-aware underwater intervention techniques, which are critical for the widespread adoption of robotics solutions in this rapidly expanding sector. The vision of the UNITE project is to develop a holistic solution to autonomous and semi-autonomous underwater intervention applied to the maintenance and repair of offshore wind farms, remotely monitored from shore and safely operated worldwide. UNITE's research vision and programme aim at reducing the use of crewed support vessels for operation, keeping offshore turbines more productive with less downtime and more timely and cost-effective maintenance and repair. This will also support the industry to cut costs and carbon footprint while dramatically improving health&safety. In a world where climate change is increasingly impacting our lives, we need to accelerate the energy transition towards net-zero. The UK has a huge potential for Offshore Wind Energy and the UK government has made this a priority, planning to reach 1TW by 2050. To reach such ambitious targets, you have to imagine 10's of thousands of offshore wind turbines, deployed in some of the harshest environments on earth and able to reliably produce energy for decades. At present, the cost of operation and maintenance of such wind farms is 30% of the overall cost and is performed using manned vessels deployed in extreme environments, hence reducing the operational window they can be deployed, increasing the carbon footprint of operations and risk to the personnel deployed offshore. This will simply not scale when more and more wind farms are built and the availability, environmental impact and cost of the current solutions will no longer make sense. What is required is to replace these large assets by smaller, more environmentally friendly and cost effective robotic solutions, controlled safely from shore by a new generation of pilots, engineers and operators. This is already a reality, at least in advanced demonstrator form, when we are only interested in inspection. Remote drones, surface vessels and underwater systems can be sent to inspect subsea cables, turbines and other subsea assets. In some cases, they can be permanently deployed for long periods of time. However, when more complex tasks requiring intervention (contact and manipulation) are required, the current technology is not ready, especially in cases where the communication link between the robot and shore is intermittent, slow or unreliable. If not solved, this will dramatically impact the adoption of robotics (as existing solutions will still need to be deployed), and potentially stop it in its track, in turn reducing the progress of offshore renewable energy as a viable clean energy source. New research is needed to endow the remote robotic platforms with the intervention capabilities they require, as well as ensuring that the platforms are safe even when not in direct control of a human. For this to happen, robots (and their sensors) must be able to build an accurate map of the world around them and use this map to navigate around obstacles and towards targets of interest. They need to be able to interact with the structures safely (controlling force of interaction) and grasp objects whilst being subject to potentially significant external disturbances (currents, waves, etc) and coordinate their respective actions (e.g surface vehicle deploying an underwater system). They also need to understand when they might fail and alert an operator on shore to ask for support. This is what the UNITE proposal will tackle.

The National Grid has identified periods of high electricity demand combined with low wind and sun as a key challenge for supply-demand balancing in Great Britain as it transitions to clean, but intermittent renewable power generation. This was evident in Autumn 2021, when a three week period of low wind coincided with a fourfold increase in imported wholesale gas prices, caused by high global gas demand. Consequently, over twenty energy suppliers ceased trading, and energy prices increased, leading to rising fuel poverty. Wind will remain the primary source of renewable power in the UK, but its intermittency means that similar 'wind-droughts' to that seen in 2021 will occur again in the future. Energy systems must be resilient to weather to address the 'trilemma' of generating clean, affordable, secure energy. This research investigates the roles of tidal stream, tidal range and wave energy in overcoming energy security challenges. Energy security is defined as 'the uninterrupted process of securing the amount of energy that is needed to sustain people's lives and daily activities while ensuring its affordability'. MOSAIC builds on recent research that has started to show how tidal stream, tidal range and wave power generation can lead to energy security benefits. Latest estimates indicate that the combined tidal stream, tidal range and wave energy resources around Great Britain can contribute 45% of the UK's current electricity demand. The timing of tidal stream/range power is independent of weather patterns, and instead depends on the positions of the sun, earth and moon, and the rotation of the earth. This characteristic of tidal power means that it can provide reliable electricity supply every day, and that the amount of tidal power generated at any time in the future can be predicted. Co-locating tidal stream and tidal range power plants can lead to a smoothing of the combined power supply, because the two technologies tend to generate power at different times of the tide. Wave power lags wind power to help provide a more stable overall renewable supply. The predictable, reliable, smoothed power generation provided by adopting tidal and wave energy enhances balancing between power supply and demand, reducing the need for costly imported power, energy storage and grid upgrades, for example. The aim of the research is to establish and optimise the contributions of tidal stream, tidal range and wave energy future energy systems to enhance energy security. This will be achieved by building new computer models that simulate the flow of power between components on the national and local electricity grids. The models will be able to optimise the amount of power provided by all generation technologies, including tidal and wave energy, in order to provide energy security. The project will deliver a roadmap that sets out the amount, locations and cost of new tidal/wave energy projects to deliver energy security enhancements between 2035-50. The roadmap will be informed by novel energy system modelling outputs at three different scales based on the energy systems of Great Britain, Wales and the Isle of Wight. The incorporation of three different scales allows the energy system models to simulate and optimise the transmission and distribution grids as well of power generation and energy storage. This novel approach is critical to fully understand the compatibility of different technologies. Results from the research will be communicated to UK Government, the National Grid and the Isle of Wight Council, to inform the design of future energy systems. The models will be freely available for anyone to use. This provides opportunities to establish the suitability of energy system models currently being used to design energy systems, which may over-simplify the simulation and optimisation of tidal stream/range and wave power.