By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://educom.net/
Maximising the benefits of the UK’s wind farms
By 2030, the UK Government wants offshore wind to produce enough electricity to power every single home in the country.
This aim will be at the centre of the UK's drive towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050, with offshore wind power capacity rising from 30GW to 40GW.
Being home to over a third of the world's offshore wind farms – including 7 out of 10 of the world's biggest sites – the UK is in a very good position to rise to the challenge.
"It's a very ambitious target," says Professor Carlos Ugalde-Loo, from our School of Engineering. "However, the price for not taking this seriously could be devastating. We're talking about the extinction of species, and islands in the Pacific Ocean being completely wiped out. We really need to understand the gravity of the situation and should try to deliver the best we can."
Doing so will require significant investment in new technologies, whilst at the same time, increasing the capacity of existing power transmission corridors to integrate offshore and onshore wind.
It is the task of improving and modernising existing infrastructure that has been a goal of the Centre for Integrated Renewable Energy Generation and Supply for the last 10 years.
At the heart of the problem is the task of trying to mix the old with the new.
With parts of the National Grid built more than 40 years ago, and a power system originally conceived to transfer power from large generating stations directly to consumers, it has become increasingly difficult to integrate brand new renewable technologies into the existing grid, Professor Ugalde-Loo explains.
"We are stretching the power transmission network to the max by adding a wind farm here and another one there, and this is just increasingly stressing the system and creating technical challenges."
