First IDCORE summer school for renewables

The summer school is part of the Industrial Doctorate Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) programme, which delivers an industry focused course that aims to expand and sustain a community of high quality post-doctoral staff for the UK offshore renewable energy industry.

The Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Exeter supported by the Scottish Association for Marine Science and HR Wallingford have formed a partnership to deliver IDCORE, which is funded by the Energy Technologies Institute and the Research Councils UK Energy Programme.

The HR Wallingford summer school, which is the first of its kind, delivered a mixture of taught sessions, case studies and expert tutorials in offshore renewable energy. Presentations from guest speakers from the University of Bath, Gardline, Fugro, and Van Oord, and sessions in HR Wallingford’s hydraulics laboratory and navigation simulator added to the practical aspects of the course.

The attendees had the opportunity to work alongside highly skilled and experienced staff in the laboratory exploring problems of scour and cable laying in sand beds. They also used the state of the art ship simulation centre to practise navigating through a wind farm, and docking a service boat against a wind turbine monopile.

Professor William Allsop, technical director of the coastal structures group and IDCORE manager at HR Wallingford said, “This has been a valuable experience for the IDCORE research engineers, enabling them to get first hand experience of the type of renewable energy projects that we are involved in. It has also been a privilege for HR Wallingford staff to work with some of the future leaders of this sector.”