The UK government is determined to address the challenges of tackling climate change and maintaining energy security in a way that minimises costs and maximises benefits to the economy. Among all sources of CO2 emissions in the UK, the energy supply accounts for about 40%, followed by the transport for over 25%. To meet the target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, large proportion of electricity generated from low carbon sources integrated with mass adoption of electric vehicles (EV) offer a great potential. Likewise, the Chinese 12th National Economic and Social Development Five-Year Plan has set the target of 3.5% reduction per unit of GDP in both energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, and identified new energy and clean energy vehicles among the seven priority industries in the next five years from 2012. It is clear that both countries are fully committed to a planned 'decarbonisation' of their respective energy systems. However, both face the challenges of planning and building the suitable infrastructure, and of managing the resources to ensure future power systems operate more reliably, more flexibly, and more economically, by integrating and coordinating the actions of all actors. It has been widely recognized that electric vehicles could both benefit from and help to drive forward the development of smart grids where renewable resources are widely and substantially employed. However, a number of technical challenges are still open for further exploitation. The proposed collaborative interdisciplinary research will investigate and develop an intelligent grid interfaced vehicle eco-charging (iGIVE) system for more reliable, more flexible and efficient, and more environmental friendly smart gird solutions for seamless integration of distributed low-carbon intermittent power generation and large number of EVs. To achieve this, a multilayer hierarchical power and information flow framework for monitoring and optimal control of the EV charging while minimising the volume of information passed to the utility control centers will be investigated first. Within this framework, a variable rate bi-directional high performance EV battery charging unit based on a patented technology will be developed, and battery management and optimal EV charging and discharging dispatching strategies will be investigated. Other issues associated to the charging stations, such as electromagnetic interference and harmonics generation and their impact on environment and electricity grid will also be studied. Finally, simulation platform will be built to investigate the interactions of EV-related different participants and their impact on the grid operations. A test bed to verify the design will be developed and a joint UK-China joint laboratory on smart grid and EV integration will be established, bringing together key academic and industry partners in smart grid and EV from UK and China. Both system operators and EV industry in the UK, China and other parts of the world will benefit considerably from the development of intelligent EV eco-charging systems when a large number of EVs are adopted by the public and greater amounts of renewable power are utilized, as they provide an adaptive and intelligent framework and EV charging systems to economically, efficiently and environment-friendly accommodate charging requirements as well as providing ancillary service to the grid integrated with larger amounts of intermittent renewable energy sources and thereby enable the decarbonisation of the electricity supply industry and the transport sector.

Over the next twenty years, the automotive and aerospace sector will undergo a fundamental revolution in propulsion technology. The automotive sector will rapidly move away from petrol and diesel engine powered cars towards fully electric propelled vehicles whilst planes will move away from pure kerosene powered jet engines to hybrid-electric propulsion. The automotive and aerospace industry has worked for the last two decades on developing electric propulsion research but development investment from industry and governments was low until recently, due to lag of legislation to significantly reduce greenhouse gases. Since the ratification of the 2016 Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius, governments of industrial developed nations have now legislated to ban new combustion powered vehicles (by 2040 in the UK and France, by 2030 in Germany and similar legislation is expected soon in China). The implementation of this ban will see a sharp rise of the global electric vehicle market to 7.5 million by 2020 with exponential growth. In the aerospace sector, Airbus, Siemens and Rolls-Royce have announced a 100-seater hybrid-electric aircraft to be launched by 2030 following successful tests of 2 seater electric powered planes. Other American and European aerospace industries such as Boeing and General Electric must also prepare for this fundamental shift in propulsion technology. Every electric car and every hybrid-electric plane needs an electric drive (propulsion) system, which typically comprises a motor and the electronics that controls the flow of energy to the motor. In order to make this a cost-effective reality, the cost of electric drives must be halved and their size and weight must be reduced by up to 500% compared to today's drive systems. These targets can only be achieved by radical integration of these two sub-systems that form an electric drive: the electric motor and the power electronics (capacitors, inductors and semiconductor switches). These are currently built as two independent systems and the fusion of both creates new interactions and physical phenomena between power electronics components and the electric motor. For example, all power electronics components would experience lots of mechanical vibrations and heat from the electric motor. Other challenges are in the assembly of connecting millimetre thin power electronics semiconductors onto a large hundred times bigger aluminium block that houses the electric motor for mechanical strength. To achieve this type of integration, industry recognises that future professional engineers need skills beyond the classical multi-disciplinary approach where individual experts work together in a team. Future propulsion engineers must adopt cross-disciplinary and creative thinking in order to understand the requirements of other disciplines. In addition, they will need an understanding of non-traditional engineering subjects such as business thinking, use of big data, environmental issues and ethical impact. Future propulsion engineers will need to experience a training environment that emphasises both deep subject knowledge and cross-disciplinary thinking. This EPSRC CDT in Power Electronics for Sustainable Electric Propulsion is formed by two of UK's largest and most forward thinking research groups in this field (at Newcastle and Nottingham Universities) and includes 16 leading industrial partners (Cummins, Dyson, CRRC, Protean, to name a few). All of them sharing one vision: To create a new generation of UK power electronics specialists, needed to meet the societal and industrial demand for clean, electric propulsion systems in future automotive and aerospace transport infrastructures.

We are witnessing huge global shifts towards cleaner growth and more resource efficient economies. The drive to lower carbon emissions is resulting in dramatic changes in how we travel and the ways we generate and use energy worldwide. Electrical machines are at the heart of the accelerating trends in the electrification of transport and the increased use of renewable energy such as offshore wind. To address the pressing drivers for clean growth and meet the increasing demands of new applications, new electrical machines with improved performance - higher power density, lower weight, improved reliability - are being designed by researchers and industry. However, there are significant manufacturing challenges to be overcome if UK industry is going to be able to manufacture these new machines with the appropriate cost, flexibility and quality. The Hub's vision is to put UK manufacturing at the forefront of the electrification revolution. The Hub will address key manufacturing challenges in the production of high integrity and high value electrical machines for the aerospace, energy, high value automotive and premium consumer sectors. The Hub will work in partnership with industry to address some common and fundamental barriers limiting manufacturing capability and capacity: the need for in-process support to manual operations in electrical machine manufacture - e.g. coil winding, insertions, electrical connections and wiring - to improve productivity and provide quality assurance; the sensitivity of high value and high integrity machines to small changes in tolerance and the requirement for high precision in manufacturing for safety critical applications; the increasing drive to low batch size, flexibility and customisation; and the need to train the next generation of manufacturing scientists and engineers. The Hub's research programme will explore new and emerging manufacturing processes, new materials for enhanced functionality and/or light-weighting, new approaches for process modelling and simulation, and the application of digital approaches with new sensors and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.