Running Out of Energy? The Future of the UK’s Electricity Supply.

Energy is constantly in the news.  Whether it is power prices, the prospect of blackouts, dependency on uncertain sources of supply or concerns about climate change, the debate rages.  Pressure groups, industry and politicians all try to gain the public’s ear with competing claims.  There is, however, a consensus between Government and industry that an ever greater fraction of the UK’s energy will be from electricity, for example for heating and transport.

This talk will address three points:  what is driving the shift to electricity, how will the extra power be generated and what will be the environmental side effects.  The focus will be on technical feasibility, progress towards goals and political acceptability.

Dr Richard McMahon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University. His research interests fall into the two main application areas related to clean power and energy efficiency. The first is drive trains for wind power, particularly the development of the brushless doubly fed induction generator as a high reliability, low cost medium speed drive train. The second area is the study of linear machines for wave power generation. In both cases, the research covers the design of the machine itself using both analytical and computational electromagnetic methods, as well as associated power converters and control systems.

This talk is part of the IET Cambridge Network - Lectures series.