NEWS
Brit‐tech: self‐ build solar panels for Mars One is the answer, says Bas Landorp
parts of the solar panels on Mars, for example, just a crazy idea, produce plastic film on Mars and then print the solar panel electronics, basically on to the panel that you’ve produced on Mars and cover it with a really thin transparent film. “ He reports: “This would reduce your ‘imports’ from Earth, which is ,of course, really expensive. It would reduce it to a few percent of the total weight of the solar panel. That will be really interesting.” He believes batteries for
motherships & 40foot rotor turbines are likely to be the face of the future, says ORE
Robots, drone
he UK's offshore wind industry is likely to feature futuristic technologies such as drone motherships, maintenance robots and 40-rotor turbines by 2050. That’s according to the Offshore Renewable Energy
T
(ORE) Catapult, which predicts offshore wind could become the backbone of the UK’s energy mix within 12 years, potentially meeting around a third of the UK’s elec- tricity demand. It suggests within the next couple of decades, automated motherships will travel to hazardous offshore locations, where they will deploy armies of robots to carry out maintenance and basic repairs much more cheaply than previously possible. The ORE Catapult expects turbines will become
bigger, with engineering requirements and weight limits meaning innovative new multi-rotor designs and vertical axis turbines will need to be developed. It adds issues faced by the intermittency of wind power will be over- come with fully-developed energy storage technology. Dr Stephen Wyatt, Research and Innovation Director
at ORE Catapult, said: “While we will see an increase in automation and robotics, this new wave of offshore technology will in fact create jobs, with engineers and programmers required to create, maintain and operate these devices.” One of the world’s longest offshore wind turbine blades recently arrived at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s testing facilities in Blyth, Northumberland. The 88.4-metre LM Wind Power blade will be put through its paces at ORE Catapult’s key world-leading 100m blade-test facility over the coming months. The blade has
been developed as part of XL- Blade, an EU Demowind-funded project that aims to reduce the cost of offshore wind by designing, vali- dating & deploying the world’s largest new offshore wind turbine blade.
16 A
carbon capture project has been awarded a research and development grant worth almost £900,000. A consortium led by Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL) will
use the funding to build a large-scale testing facility at the University of Sheffield. It will to develop progress research into lowering the cost of the technology, with the ultimate
aim of developing a solution that is affordable on a large scale. CCSL previously launched a fully commercial carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) plant in India in 2016, which captures CO2 at $30 (£21.6) per tonne – said to be much lower than the $60-$90 per tonne capture costs seen in the global power sector. With the latest grant, it is hoped the technology can be further refined to capture CO2 at a cost of $20 (£14) per tonne. Prateek Bumb, CTO and Co-founder of CCSL said: “This grant is testament to the importance
of developing affordable carbon capture technology, which can be rolled out on a large scale. This technology will play a crucial role in helping the UK meet its energy targets.” The idea behind carbon capture is relatively straightforward. Places like coal power stations produce carbon dioxide, but instead of being funnelled into the air, it's stored away. One way to do this is by taking it away by pipeline to an offshore platform where it's injected into the space left by depleted oil and gas fields. Scotland has the capability to be at the forefront of this technology, given the North Sea's potential as the biggest CO2 storage space in Europe. But as simple as the theory is, carbon capture needs a lot of funding to develop it. Prof Stuart Haszeldine, director of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage, said: "You can't develop the first projects very easily without government backing, because any first project is usually much more expensive than the follow-on projects, because you're over-engineering That's what government help involving £1bn is needed for, to help part-fund carbon capture projects. After you've built the first ones, it becomes cheaper." He added: "For governments to not even venture down this path, when it's clearly shown that carbon-capture and storage is by far the best financial benefit to the whole economy is negligent, naive and deceitful."
MARCH ‐ APRIL 2018 UK POWER NEWS
The head of Mars One is aiming high with the hope of eventually producing parts of solar panels on the second smallest planet. Bas Lansdorp is the man behind the project which aims to establish a permanent habitable settlement on Mars, with the first mission set for 2032. He explains that while the long-term feasibility is yet to be explored, the baseline design and solution for energy generation in the
short term is solar power. The first settlement is expected to install approximately 3,000 square meters of power generating surface area. And British technology could make this idea a reality. Mr Lansdorp said he is brainstorming “crazy ideas” – one being the possibility of producing and storing heat and power on Mars. He added: “Instead of send-
ing solar panels from Earth, one idea might be to produce
energy storage will also be crucial and the system is being scaled to deal with the longest winter night to ensure it has enough capacity to power through. The mission, however, eventually hopes to store heat instead of electricity – by implementing another “crazy idea” of using aluminium for energy storage. Mr Lansdorp adds the option
of nuclear power is also available but he is “not a fan” due to public opposition.
UK carbon capture project is awarded £900,000 in R&D grant money
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