MSc Wind Energy Systems

The aim of this class is to provide you with support for your general academic and professional development.

You'll undertake an advanced investigation of an electronic or electrical engineering topic of your choice, to enhance your learning, and develop presentation and communication skills.

This class will provide an understanding of the principles of wind turbine power generation with attention to the wind resource, rotor aerodynamics, structural design, power conversion and control.

Socio-economic issues, distributed energy resources including small scale generation, energy storage and demand management and their integration and management within power networks will also be examined.

The objectives of this class is to provide a basic understanding of the wind resource and the principal of wind turbine power conversion including:

• an introduction to rotor dynamic suitable for non-specialist engineers and scientists
• an explanation of  the evolution of contemporary wind turbine technology

You'll gain sufficient understanding to outline the design and operation of multi-megawatt machines.

You'll develop an understanding of the principles of common power electronic systems. You'll gain familiarity with the techniques required to analyse common power electronic circuits and learn about the basic principles behind the design of rotating electrical machines. The techniques required to analyse basic DC and AC machines will also be investigated.

You'll learn to recognise that disturbances exist within a power system substation, appreciate that these disturbances may affect electromagnetic compatibility and become competent in dealing with the implications of those disturbances.

You'll gain an understanding of the use of power electronic devices, drives and machines for given applications, specifically for electric vehicles. You'll examine the range of energy sources capable of powering ‘independent’ EVs, how these sources work, their performance and degradation issues and how to charge/fuel them.

The objective of this class is to enable you to appreciate the principles of analysis, design and protection of electrical power systems including:

• the design and operational approaches in power systems including electricity generation, transmission and distribution
• the analysis and design of transmission and distribution networks
• power flow, fault and stability calculations
• power system control including load frequency control and economic dispatch
• generation technology implications on power system design and operation.

You'll also study the main concepts related to the requirements, functions, design and operation of protection schemes for power system transmission and distribution systems. You'll gain an advanced understanding of selected protection schemes used in transmission and distribution networks.

This module will deliver the following learning outcomes:

1. appreciate and experience state-of-the-art modeling and simulation tools, represent linear dynamic systems in state space and transfer function, create simulations using Simulink, use MATLAB system analysis tools.
2. understand the feedback control fundamentals. Use and interpret time and frequency domain performance measures, understand stability and controller tuning principles, understand system controllability and observability, and obtain awareness of functionality and design of state observers.
3. understand the structure and effects of PID controllers, use simple PID tuning methods, design state feedback controllers including pole-placement and linear quadratic optimal control, be aware of advanced control methods such as predictive control and statistical process control.

This class will allow you to understand, critically analyse and assess technical requirements for power system operation, management and planning. It will enable you to carry out advanced types of power system analysis as well as understand and use results from these analyses in power system operation and planning. You'll also develop an advanced knowledge of the main concepts related to the function, design and operation of protection schemes for distribution, transmission and generation applications.

This class will introduce you to the fundamentals of high voltage electrical insulating systems and the principles, mechanisms and characteristics of high voltage discharges in vacuum and condensed media. It will also provide you with a basic understanding of the behaviour of dielectric materials stressed with electric fields and their use in high voltage systems. You'll also gain an understanding of the principles of high voltage generation and impulse testing of the high voltage systems.

Modern energy conversion systems rely on the integration of range of technologies including power electronics, electromechanical actuators and energy storage elements. This class will build knowledge of the building block technologies and show their application to modern energy conversion systems.

This class will present and give an understanding of the economics, trading and pricing of electricity supply and how it is shaped by technical, commercial and regulatory considerations.

It will give you an understanding of power system economics under an environment of multiple suppliers and users, and present the challenges, technologies and value of asset management within an electricity supply industry context. You'll gain a deep appreciation of factors affecting security of supply and how it might be quantified.

The class aims to provide students with:

• an understanding of economic principles underpinning the demand for, and supply of energy resources
• an understanding of the role of energy policy and efficient and sustainable energy use
• economic techniques used by private and public organisations in analysing energy projects and policies
• the interrelationships between economy-energy-environmental impacts of energy policies, including the use of economic modelling techniques

This class provides you with an insight into ‘marine’ materials, their properties, failure and protection and an understanding of how degradation affects the life-cycle of marine and offshore structures.

Particular emphasis is on inspection and assessment of inspection results, corrosion, fatigue and fracture of steels and the corrosion properties of high-strength and stainless alloy steels.

This class provides a thorough introduction to Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

GIS are spatial databases which can handle spatial information in a far greater variety of ways than was previously possible with paper maps. By capturing, manipulating, integrating and displaying digital spatial data, a wide range of different analyses can be carried out and questions addressed.

The class covers the key theoretical principles of GIS, provides practical hands-on exercises using current state-of-the-art GIS systems, including raster (IDRISI Andes) and vector (ArcGIS) based software, and demonstrates how GIS can be used for spatial query and analysis.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) relates to the process of identifying, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social, economic, cultural and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made.

This class aims to provide you with an introduction to some of the methods used to predict environmental impacts and to see how these may be used to integrate environmental factors into decisions.

The class emphasises the use of EIA as a design tool and focuses on issues related to the quality of the EIA process overall and of Environmental Impact Statements in particular.

The class draws principally on the UK planning context of environmental impact assessment (also called Environmental Assessment), but also takes account of EIA experience in other countries and international organisations, together with developing international experience of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).

The aim of the research project is to provide you with an opportunity to bring your knowledge and skills together and deploy them in a significant practical investigation, using relevant engineering literature, and where relevant, initial experiments or simulations.