HR Wallingford has hosted a summer school for some of the brightest renewable energy engineers in the country. The summer school is part of the Industrial Doctorate Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) programme, which delivers an industry focused course that aims to expand and sustain a community of high-quality post-doctoral staff for the UK offshore renewable energy industry.
The HR Wallingford summer school, which is the first of its kind, delivered a mixture of taught sessions, case studies and expert tutorials in offshore renewable energy. Presentations from guest speakers from University of Bath, Gardline, Fugro, and Van Oord, and practical sessions in HR Wallingford’s world-leading hydraulics laboratory and navigation simulator added to the practical aspects of the course.
The attendees had the opportunity to work alongside our highly skilled and experienced staff in the laboratory exploring problems of scour and cable laying in sand beds; and they used our state of the art ship simulation centre to practise navigating through a wind farm, and docking a service boat against a wind turbine mono-pile.
Professor William Allsop, technical director of the coastal structures group and IDCORE manager at HR Wallingford said: “This has been a valuable experience for the IDCORE research engineers, enabling them to get first hand experience of the type of renewable energy projects that we are involved in. It has also been a privilege for HR Wallingford staff to work with some of the future leaders of this sector.”
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Offshore WIND staff, August 31, 2012; Image: hrwallingford