21st Century High Voltage Engineering Research: Making Sure We Can Keep the Lights on 24/7 Event
- Time:
- 14:00 - 15:00
- Date:
- 22 February 2012
- Venue:
- Building 45, Room 45
Event details
The world faces many challenges over the coming decades but possibly the most important is the generation and distribution of energy without inflicting further damage to the planet. Worldwide demand for electrical energy continues to increase at an alarming rate and there is a clear agenda to increase generation from renewable sources and work towards significant reductions in CO2 emissions.
This is often seen as a challenge in terms of ‘security of supply', i.e. ensuring that there are energy resources to meet our demand, however, the real research challenge is concerned with ‘operational security of electrical supply' i.e. ensuring that electrical energy is efficiently and continuously delivered to the consumer.
In terms of high voltage engineering research this challenge takes many forms, some of which are:
- How do we further develop our fundamental understanding of why electrical insulation systems age, degrade and fail?
- How do we ensure high voltage plant operates reliably 24/7?
- Can we work our existing high voltage assets harder without risking failure?
- Ultimately, how do we get from where we are now to the ‘smart-grid' or ‘supergrid' of the future?
On-going research in the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory is tackling these issues and will be discussed in this seminar.