Harnessing the power of tides
Tidal power could hold the key to the generation of huge amounts of renewable energy. It is estimated one fifth of Britain’s energy needs could be met if we placed subsea turbines in all the suitable sites around our coastline.
Ship Science Research Fellow Dr Rachel Nicholls-Lee is working on new designs of turbine blades that can change their shape underwater. She is using adaptive composites, largely fibre-reinforced plastic, in her research. The Southampton team believes blades would be more efficient at capturing energy, if they could adapt to the changing underwater environment.
Rachel graduated from Southampton with a MEng degree, first class, in 2004, then worked in industry for two years as a yacht designer before returning to university. She started work on adaptive composite blades for her PhD and has continued with the project; it has been supported by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
"Renewable energy offers many opportunities for researchers as we're always at the forefront of new technologies," she says. "Tidal energy has tremendous potential as we can predict tides to within a minute, until the world stops turning."