UK and China to develop new offshore energy technology

Five projects will bring together "some of the leading minds in this field"

Researchers from the UK and China have agreed to work together on five projects to develop the “next generation” of offshore renewable energy.

The projects have been funded as part of the Joint UK-China Offshore Renewable Energy programme, with support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the National Environment Research Council.

The three-year long projects will also help to showcase the potential of offshore renewable energy to provide stable power supplies for island and coastal communities and understand the risk of extreme weather events.

A project led by Professor Thomas Adcock from the University of Oxford and Professor Ye Li from Shanghai Jiao Tong University will specifically look at the impact of extreme wind and typhoons on offshore wind turbines.

While another project led by Professor Mike Graham from Imperial College London and Professor Yonghua Song from Zhejiang University will examine how to create a new generation of predicting capabilities, which will support the design of more economical offshore windfarms.

Energy minister Richard Harrington said it will support “collaborative research into the next generation of  offshore technologies with one of our largest global trading partners”.

While the chief executive of the EPSRC, Professor Philip Nelson, added: “This multi-disciplinary programme has already delivered invaluable research on reducing energy demand at the city scale, the integration of electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage.

“These new projects bring together some of the leading minds in this field from the UK and China to increase our capacity to generate and distribute affordable, safe, clean energy.”