Status
In Progress
Principle Investigator Contact Information
Name: Professor Deborah Greaves OBE
Address: University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA
Phone: Supergen ORE Hub office number: +44 (0)1752 586102
Email: supergenorehub@plymouth.ac.uk
Description
The Supergen ORE Hub is a £16.5 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) programme (2018–2027) which brings together academia, industry, policy makers and the general public to support and accelerate the development of offshore wind, wave and tidal technology for the benefit of society.
The Hub is led by the University of Plymouth and includes Co-Directors from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Exeter, Hull, Manchester, Oxford, Southampton, Strathclyde, and Warwick. The Supergen ORE Hub is one of three Supergen Hubs and two Supergen Networks+ created by the EPSRC to deliver strategic and coordinated research on Sustainable Power Generation and supply.
Funding Source
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Funding Contact
Amy Spalding (EPSRC Portfolio lead) Amy.Spalding@epsrc.ukri.org
Location of Research
Various locations
Project Aims
Rapid Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) expansion is essential to the UK for (i) Net Zero and climate change mitigation, (ii) energy security, (iii) green growth and jobs.
- Climate change mitigation: requires ORE to be deployed 10 times faster than the current rate to meet Net Zero targets set out in the 6th Carbon budget. If we are to meet the UK plans for Net Zero, Energy Security and just transition, there needs to be a significant ramp up in underpinning research and in skills and training – it cannot be business as usual.
- Energy security: ORE growth will mitigate the effects of the cost-of-living crisis and geopolitical instability. ORE can minimise consumer energy costs, but many research and engineering challenges need addressing to realise the scale and rate of deployment required. A fourfold reduction in project consenting time is targeted, requiring a whole system approach with interdisciplinary collaboration underpinned by an integrated research and innovation.
- Green growth and jobs: The UK’s ORE industry growth underpins new high-skilled jobs, often in areas of the UK in most need of investment, supporting the levelling up agenda. With a local and abundant resource, rapid expansion of ORE for Net Zero could help to achieve a Just Transition with economic and social benefits, keeping the UK as a world leader in deployment and technology for ORE.
With an increased focus on delivering and enabling impact, the Supergen ORE Hub (SOH) will drive faster ORE expansion via four high level objectives:
- Streamlining ORE projects, by accelerating planning, consenting and build out timescales
- Upscaling the scale and efficiency of ORE devices and systems, and the ORE workforce
- Competitiveness: maximising ORE local content and ORE economic viability in the energy mix, to maximise UK benefits of the drive to Net Zero
- Sustainability: ensuring positive environmental and societal benefits from ORE; a just transition
Study Progress
The Supergen ORE Hub project is currently in progress.
Key Findings
The first phase of the Supergen ORE Hub (2018 – 2023) has built a community of academics, industry and other stakeholders, successfully unifying the ORE community around common research challenges. The next phase (2023 – 2027) will build on all elements of the established structure and take this activity and impact to the next level to match UK Net Zero, Energy Security and affordability aspirations.
The new work programme addresses the key drivers of streamlining, upscaling, competitiveness and sustainability through five interdisciplinary workstreams:
- Workstream 1: ORE expansion – policy and scenarios: explores future upscaling scenarios and the enabling policies required to ensure economic and system benefits, enabling retention and growth of domestic supply chains, skills and circular economy, as well as methods to include ecosystem benefits in GVA measures, facilitating sustainability, ORE’s contribution to Net Zero and a just transition.
- Workstream 2: Data for ORE design and decision-making: advances in data collection, collation, analysis and interpretation will streamline and accelerate design and decision-making in ORE projects, from the planning and consenting phase, through operations, to the end-of-life outcomes.
- Workstream 3: ORE modelling: upscaling will require more advanced modelling tools addressing more complex applications. Confidence in new tools, approaches and computing architectures requires the quantification of uncertainties through targeted development, experimental validation and aligned field measurement campaigns.
- Workstream 4: ORE design methods: new design solutions and new design methods will help achieve cost reduction and improve competitiveness needed to accelerate technologies in offshore wind, tidal and wave infrastructure.
- Workstream 5: Future ORE systems and concepts: novel frontier sustainability solutions to achieve step change advances in ORE though sharing infrastructure, multi-use and multi-turbine structures and very large and interconnected floating systems.
Further detail about each of the workstreams, including the tasks associated with them, is available on the Supergen ORE Hub website: https://supergen-ore.net/about
Related Publications
Supergen ORE Hub publications and reports (from 2019 – 2024) can be viewed on our website:
• Publications: https://supergen-ore.net/impact#publications
• Reports: https://supergen-ore.net/impact#reports
2024 Publications
- Accelerated seawater ageing and fatigue performance of glass fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites for marine and tidal energy applications
- Multi-stage, in-situ polymerisation for low-exotherm, liquid resin infusion of thick thermoplastic laminates at room temperature
- Simulated end-of-life reuse of composites from marine applications using thermal reshaping of seawater-aged, glass fibre-reinforced acrylic materials
2023 Publications
- The influence of directional spreading on rogue waves triggered by abrupt depth transitions
- Finding space for offshore wind to support net zero: A methodology to assess spatial constraints and future scenarios, illustrated by a UK case study
- Power regulation and load mitigation of floating wind turbines via reinforcement learning
- Phase-resolved real-time forecasting of three-dimensional ocean waves via machine learning and wave tank experiments
- Digital twin of wind farms via physics-informed deep learning
- Variable buoyancy anchor deployment analysis for floating wind applications using a Marine Simulator
- Marine environmental effects on a graphene reinforced epoxy adhered single lap joint between metals and CFRP
- Installation performance of structurally enhanced caissons in sand
- Real-Time Hybrid Testing of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Using a Surrogate-Based Aerodynamic Emulator
- Modeling of a hinged-raft wave energy converter via deep operator learning and wave tank experiments
- Reinforcement Learning-Based Wind Farm Control: Toward Large Farm Applications via Automatic Grouping and Transfer Learning
- Numerical modelling of laterally loaded piles driven in low-to-medium density fractured chalk
2022 Publications
- Using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery to characterise pursuit-diving seabird association with tidal stream hydrodynamic habitat features
- A new strategic framework to structure cumulative impact assessment (CIA)
- Ecologically-sustainable futures for large-scale renewables and how to get there
- Tidal streams, fish, and seabirds: Understanding the linkages between mobile predators, prey, and hydrodynamics
- An ecosystem-based natural capital evaluation framework that combines environmental and socio-economic implications of offshore renewable energy developments
- A proxy of subsurface Chlorophyll-a in shelf waters: use of density profiles and the below mixed layer depth (BMLD)
- Wave record gap-filling using a low-rank tensor completion model
- A real-time spatiotemporal machine learning framework for the prediction of nearshore wave conditions
- Data-driven wind farm control via multiplayer deep reinforcement learning
- Floating offshore wind turbines port requirements for construction
- An experimental investigation into the behaviour of destructured chalk under cyclic loading
- A laboratory characterisation of the response of intact chalk to cyclic loading
- Advanced in situ and laboratory characterisation of the ALPACA chalk research site
- Deep learning-based wind farm power prediction using Transformer network
- Intelligent wind farm control via grouping-based reinforcement learning
- Multi-fidelity modeling of wind farm wakes based on a novel super-fidelity network
- Liquid air energy storage for ancillary services in an integrated hybrid renewable system
- Dynamic wind farm wake modeling based on a Bilateral Convolutional Neural Network and high-fidelity LES data
- Phase-resolved real-time ocean wave prediction with quantified uncertainty based on variational Bayesian machine learning
- Vibration suppression of multi-component floating structures via passive TMDs and Bayesian ascent
- Drone-based large-scale particle image velocimetry applied to tidal stream energy resource assessment
- Long-term extreme response of an offshore turbine: How accurate are contour-based estimates?
- Quantitative comparison of environmental contour approaches
- Use of our future seas: relevance of spatial and temporal scale for physical and biological indicators
- Wave energy extraction from a floating flexible circular plate
- On the scalability of wave energy converters
- Aeroelastic simulation of high-aspect ratio wings with intermittent leading-edge separation
- Wind farm wake modeling based on deep convolutional conditional generative adversarial network
- A cyclic py model for the whole-life response of piles in soft clay
- Evolving soil-conductor stiffness due to multiple-episode cyclic loading
- Medium-term variability of the UK's combined tidal energy resource for a net-zero carbon grid
- An experimental assessment of the effect of current on wave buoy measurements
- Gaussian distribution-based inertial control of wind turbine generators for fast frequency response in low inertia systems
- Deriving current cost requirements from future targets: Case studies for emerging offshore renewable energy technologies
- Physics and applications of squid-inspired jetting
- Wind farm control technologies: from classical control to reinforcement learning
- An ecosystem-based natural capital evaluation framework that combines environmental and socio-economic implications of offshore renewable energy developments
2021 Publications
- A framework for processing wave buoy measurements in the presence of current
- System integration and coupled effects of an OWT/WEC device
- Satellite data for the offshore renewable energy sector: Synergies and innovation opportunities
- Bayesian network modelling provides spatial and temporal understanding of ecosystem dynamics within shallow shelf seas
- Development of modular bio-inspired autonomous underwater vehicle for close subsea asset inspection
- Performance of a plate‐wave energy converter integrated in a floating breakwater
- ROV launch and recovery from an unmanned autonomous surface vessel–Hydrodynamic modelling and system integration
- Vibration and power regulation control of a floating wind turbine with hydrostatic transmission
- Extending limits for wave power absorption by axisymmetric devices
- Corrigendum: the effect of variable stiffness of tuna-like fish body and fin on swimming performance
- Water wave scattering by impermeable and perforated plates
- Episodic simple shear tests to measure strength changes for whole-life geotechnical design
- Analysis of the added mass term in soil bearing capacity problems
- Numerical simulation of parametric resonance in point absorbers using a simplified model
- Wave energy in the UK: Status review and future perspectives
- Reliability of wind turbine power modules using high-resolution wind data reconstruction: a digital twin concept
- Compact floating wave energy converter arrays: Inter-device mooring connectivity and performance
- The effect of serial correlation in environmental conditions on estimates of extreme events
- Round robin testing: Exploring experimental uncertainties through a multifacility comparison of a hinged raft wave energy converter
- On the impact of motion-thrust coupling in floating tidal energy applications
- Ocean energy systems wave energy modeling task 10.4: Numerical modeling of a fixed oscillating water column
- Physical modelling of the effect on the wave field of the WaveCat wave energy converter
- Long-term extreme response of an offshore turbine: How accurate are contour-based estimates?
- Aeroelastic simulation of high-aspect ratio wings with intermittent leading-edge separation
- Wind farm wake modeling based on deep convolutional conditional generative adversarial network
- Satellite data for the offshore renewable energy sector: synergies and innovation opportunities
- Wave-turbulence separation at a tidal energy site with empirical orthogonal function analysis
- Three-dimensional spatiotemporal wind field reconstruction based on physics-informed deep learning
- Wind farm power generation control via double-network-based deep reinforcement learning
- A phase change material integrated press pack power module with enhanced overcurrent capability for grid support—A study on FRD
- Optimal power extraction of a two-stage tidal turbine system based on backstepping disturbance rejection control
- Current status and future trends in the operation and maintenance of offshore wind turbines: A review
2020 Publications
- A preliminary parametric techno-economic study of offshore wind floater concepts. Ocean Engineering
- Feasibility Studies of a Converter-free Grid-connected Offshore Hydrostatic Wind Turbine
- Experimental testing of the performance and interference effects of a cross-stream array of tidal turbines In Developments in Renewable Energies Offshore
- On the calibration of a WEC-Sim model for heaving point absorbers.
- Wave scattering by a floating porous elastic plate of arbitrary shape: A semi-analytical study
2019 Publications
- Load and fatigue evaluation for 66kV floating offshore wind submarine dynamic power cable
- Feasibility Studies of a Converter-free Grid-connected Offshore Hydrostatic Wind Turbine
- A preliminary parametric techno-economic study of offshore wind floater concepts
- ADV Preview Based Nonlinear Predictive Control for Maximizing Power Generation of a Tidal Turbine with Hydrostatic Transmission
- A preliminary techno-economic comparison between a grid-connected and non-grid connected offshore floating wind farm
- Power extraction in regular and random waves from an OWC in hybrid wind-wave energy systems
- A numerical and experimental investigation of the effect of side walls on hydrodynamic model testing in a wave flume
- A blind comparative study of focused wave interactions with a fixed FPSO-like structure (CCP-WSI Blind Test Series 1)
- ‘Numerical simulation of focused wave interactions with a fixed FPSO using OpenFOAM 4.1'
- Monopile-mounted Wave Energy Converter for a Hybrid Wind-Wave System
- Wave power extraction from multiple oscillating water columns along a straight coast
- ‘OES Wave Energy Modelling Task: Modelling, Verification and Validation of Wave Energy Converters’