The EU has a binding target of 20% of energy to come from renewables by 2020, with an associated CO2 emissions reduction target of 20% (relative to 1990) and a 20% reduction on energy usage by the same date. This is the so-called 20/20/20 target. The UK's target is for 15% of energy to be sourced from renewables by this date. For this target to be met, over 30% of electricity will need to be generated from renewables and it is anticipated that 31GW of this will come from wind power with 13GW onshore and 18GW offshore by 2020 to 40GW of offshore wind power capacity could be installed by 2030. At present 6GW of wind power have been installed onshore and 3GW offshore. Because of environmental concerns, the development of onshore wind power in the UK is being constrained making the cost-effective and reliable offshore development ever more important. To increase offshore capacity by at least a factor of five in seven years, whilst minimising the cost of energy, presents very significant design, operational and logistical challenges. Within the above context and in the longer term, wind farms and wind turbines will be sited further offshore in deeper water and become bigger. The proposed Supergen Wind Hub brings together leading wind energy academic research groups in UK to address the medium term challenges of scaling up to multiple wind farms, considering how to better build, operate and maintain multi-GW arrays of wind turbines whilst providing a reliable source of electricity whose characteristics can be effectively integrated into a modern power system such as that in the UK. The wind resource over both short and long terms, the interaction of wakes within a wind farm and the turbine loads and their impact on reliability will all need to be better understood. The layout of the farms, including foundations, impact on radar and power systems and shore-connection issues, will need to be optimised. The most effective and efficient operation of wind farms will require them to act as virtual conventional power plants flexibly responding to the current conditions, the wind turbines' state and operational demands and grid-integration requirements. The programme of research for the Supergen Wind Energy Hub will focus on all of the above, both at the level of single farms and of clusters of farms.

A major problem for photovoltaics is the lack of a fast and accurate energy rating for new devices and modules. Currently, methods for predicting the energy yield for a given device are either too simplistic, especially with regard to emerging technologies, or long-measurement campaigns are required. This problem will be solved by developing an energy rating based on direct laboratory measurements and thus not be based on simplifications, reducing the time needed for realistic measurement campaigns from months to hours. At the heart of this method is a novel measurement apparatus, which will allow among other things the generation of variable irradiance spectra, closely matched to those experienced in real outdoor operation. A novel methodology will be developed to evaluate technologies currently at the development stage and an extensive validation of the approach will be carried out. Theoretical work will be undertaken to underpin the development of this new approach to energy rating of solar modules.

The Mission of Supergen Wind 2'To undertake research to achieve an integrated, cost-effective, reliable & available Offshore Wind Power Station.'This will be done under the four objectives:Reliability.Resource estimation.Scaling up of turbine sizes.Lifetime costs.The project will have two parallel Initiating Themes during the first two years. The first to deal with research into the physics and engineering of the offshore wind farm. The second to look more specifically at the wind turbine, building upon the lessons of Supergen Wind 1. In the third and fourth years of the project, the results of these two Themes will feed into a third Gathering Theme, which will consider the wind farm as a power station looking at how the power station should be designed, operated and maintained for optimum reliability and what the overall economics will be.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Reliability is essential to the success of renewable energy systems. The estimated life of wind turbines is about 20 years, this is in comparison to 40 years for a conventional steam turbine generator unit. However the failure rate of wind turbines is about 3 times higher than that of conventional generators. The key feature that differentiates a renewable energy source, from conventional generation, is the inherent fluctuation of the source, giving rise to poor reliability due to fatigue cycling and consequently high life-cycle cost. This proposal aims to build a consortium of UK and Chinese researchers to investigate the scientific causes of poor reliability of components and develop solutions to improve it. Stress analysis and impact evaluation will be performed for stresses in thermal, mechanical, or coupled thermo-mechanical domains, taking into account the practical operating conditions. Accelerated aging test will be carried out to identify critical areas where improvement can be made cost-effectively. The research aims to develop new design concepts and new techniques that can be integrated in future renewable energy conversion systems and networks for reliability. Potential new techniques include active thermal management, integrated power smoothing, and mechanical stress releasing methods. These will be compared with alternative technologies that have been pursued by the consortium members and other researchers, such as gearless direct-drive systems, modular and fault tolerant designs and condition monitoring. The research will initially focus on wind turbines but will be extended to other forms of renewable electrical power generation including wave and tidal stream systems.Five UK and four Chinese universities as well as Chinese Academy of Sciences are initially included in the consortium which is strengthened by seven industrial partners from the two countries, in order to establish the expertise and facilities needed to address the multidisciplinary problem. The programme promotes essential and close interaction between the themes and the individual tasks. The interactions take a range of forms, from providing testing materials and facilities to the development of stress and reliability models for techniques for performance improvement. Chinese organisations will commit 9 PhD studentships to compliment the 7 themed PhD studentships in UK universities. The dissemination will involve academic publications, a dedicated website, consortium meetings, international seminars and events.