Cleantech Investor

First published in Cleantech magazine, February 2011. Copyright Cleantech Investor 2011

By Elisabeth Jeffries

The defunct Dowlais Ironworks in Merthy Tydfil, South Wales, one of the gems of the industrial revolution, pioneered the use of a technique called the Bessemer process that kick-started inexpensive mass steel production.  Like Dowlais, Ebbw Vale, Shotton and other Welsh plants whose steel litters the world’s scrapyards have since then experienced the boomerang effect of foreign ownership – with Indian steel company Tata among those funding innovation.

For it is under Tata’s ownership that experts working at Shotton, North Wales hope once again to create a stir in materials production – this time for the construction sector.   Their clever idea, developed over more than a decade of research, could help drive a major expansion in solar power use. It means adding a kind of photovoltaic (PV) coating to steel panels used in buildings.  Studies suggest that the panels need to have an energy conversion rate of only 5% to make a significant difference to UK electricity production.

“You don’t need a PV wafer panel. The coating is applied at source in Shotton and can be used wherever you put steel buildings – such as in commercial buildings or industrial estates. It’s really rolling along,” remarks Mark Cross, engineering professor at Swansea University, whose colleague, Professor Dave Worsley, masterminded the coatings research.  

“Corus Colours (now Tata Steel Colors) produces around 100 million square meters of steel building cladding a year. If this was treated with the photovoltaic material, and assuming a conservative 5% energy conversion rate, then we could be looking at generating 4,500 gigawatts of electricity through the solar cells annually. That’s the equivalent output of roughly 50 wind farms," says Worsley.

Through a £10 million research council and Technology Strategy Board investment, they plan a 2011 launch of a coating centre where the roofs and walls of buildings will be converted into surfaces to generate, store and release energy.  Pilkington, BASF and other companies are also taking part, alongside UCL, Bath, Glyndwr and Bangor Universities.  Corporate funding is a major aspect of the university’s approach: “The whole R&D ethos [in engineering] is collaborative and in the last four or five years all of it is in collaboration with industry.  There is very little blue sky in it,” states Professor Cross.

According to Professor Jan Nielsen, director of Swansea’s department of research & innovation, the bridge to Asia is another part of a major strategic shift that could help build more hi-tech businesses in Wales.  Perhaps because of the loss of heavy industry from the region, Swansea, Cardiff and other neighbouring Welsh universities work in a collaborative effort with regional development organisations that is more marked than in many other regions.

Some of their experience has prompted an initiative to tap into the resource of the thousands of foreign nationals in Welsh colleges and universities, especially those from China.  The Chinese nationals at Swansea, says Nielsen, “are creating links between Welsh companies and Chinese companies. China is growing quickly and Chinese companies have large purchasing power. We are brokering introductions between the two.”  

The University’s Institute for Advanced Telecommunications is one of the beneficiaries of this policy, given its connections and funding ties with China. Among the institute’s many activities is a project to reduce the carbon footprint of mobile communications.

They are looking at reducing the power needed to transmit radio waves by using different technologies to reduce the effect of noise on signals.  That means they will be able to increase the reach of the mobile communications,” explains Nielsen.

Engineering studies have benefited from expertise developed in the area during the long years of copper, coal mining and steel production.   Rolls-Royce, which funds materials research at the university, has also agreed to invest in its proposed Science and Innovation campus at Swansea Bay. The campus is to provide greater levels of applied research with commercial outcomes by building on academic research expertise in science and technology and strengthening long term links with major international companies.

Welsh universities have not been working in isolation.  Joining together provides greater critical mass and a better chance of winning research grants and gives them more visibility as a low carbon research group.  This has been one of the raisons d’etre of a new pan-Welsh project, the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), funded to the tune of £40 million from European regional and Welsh higher education sources.  

The LCRI, which covers research on, inter alia, energy efficiency, PV, hydrogen, marine power and other sources of low carbon energy, funds some of Swansea’s work in this area, such as ongoing investigations into tidal power in the Bristol Channel.  Swansea University experts are also co-operating with a Cardiff-based company, Tidal Energy (TEL), to develop a tidal stream test site in Ramsey Sound, off the Pembrokeshire coast. TEL will install and monitor its Deltastream tidal stream energy device, while Swansea University will carry out underwater sound measurements at the site and consider ways to minimise the impact of noise.

This builds on expertise in tidal, wind and other renewable energies developed in the university and also at the Swansea Technium, an innovation centre funded from Welsh Government sources that seeks to encourage local small businesses by providing premises and other support.  Among the companies involved is the Swansea University spinout C-FEC (Cross-Flow Energy Company), which is working on a type of vertical axis wind generator. “Vertical axis turbines are simpler to maintain. This could be important in the third world,” explains Professor Mark Cross.

Swan Turbines, a tidal power company, was also spun out from Swansea University in 2006 in conjunction with major corporate partners such as Corus (now Tata Steel) and John Brown Engineering.  

“The technology of the Swan Turbine is very similar to a wind turbine. The idea behind our device is to optimise this to reduce the number of components used and thus improve its reliability and increase the ease of maintenance,” states managing director Dr James Orme.  In order to be cost-effective, turbines have to be built to resist tough, year-round marine conditions.  Reducing the likelihood of breakdown is critical to maximise the financial yield from a project.

According to Orme, a 300kW turbine, known as Cygnet, is half built and the company is looking for further funding. He wants to test the device at EMEC, the marine power research centre in Orkney, Scotland.

In Cardiff, the significant knowledge base on the built environment at the University’s Welsh School of Architecture has provided useful insights on cutting emissions onshore in homes and other buildings.  Some of the expertise developed at the school informs a larger centre, the new Sustainable Places Research Institute – a cross-disciplinary unit considering environmental and related problems across cities and the regions in which they are located.

Among the tools that could help solve some technical aspects of these issues is VIRVIL (Virtual Village for Research, Design and Development for Sustainable Settlement), a prototype virtual settlement model for the simulation of low and zero carbon technologies that can be applied to the built environment; effectively a complex software model into which clients input their own data.  The centre’s simulation tools benefited developers of new homes in Qatar, in the Arabian Gulf, by helping to devise architectural, engineering and environmental guidelines which enabled them halve energy consumption.  

“A particular strength here is the development of computer models to predict the performance of buildings, modelling the whole of a city.  Some [other] models are not always accurate because of the data put in. Standby losses, vending machines – all sorts of things creep in – and this is part of what we study,” says Professor Phil Jones, head of the Welsh School of Architecture.

Students at the school enjoy the use of an unusual facility, the Sky Dome.  Using special lighting technology, this simulates external natural lighting conditions like those arising from the sun, sky and clouds and the reflections from the ground and nearby structures in all weather conditions, seasons and locations. As the rules governing buildings have tended to neglect daylight use, some of the school’s observations on daylight harvesting could help improve their energy efficiency.

“To reduce the demand for energy you can design a building to make more use of the sun as free heat, and the Sky Dome can be used to test that. But if there is excessive solar gain, there’s a need for cooling.  There’s a balance to be made between reducing heat loss and making the most of the daylight,” comments Professor Jones.

Ebbw Vale, a former coal mining area in Monmouthshire, was also once the location of the largest steel works in Europe, which closed in 2003.  The area is now undergoing redevelopment, and is the unusual location for a prototype passive haus, which will first open to residents this year.  These houses are believed to be the first Welsh zero carbon homes, according to the Building Research Establishment (BRE), an organisation that promotes high standards in building design, which sponsored the project.  Professor Jones and his team have contributed some of their expertise to a visitor centre on the site.

But, of course, those houses that do pump out massive emissions will need smarter household management, and that is how smart meters – due to be rolled out across the UK from 2012-2020 – could make a difference, since they help customers to save energy.   Engineers at Cardiff University, steered by Professor Nick Jenkins, a director of the UK Energy Research Centre, have been refining that arcane household management system, the home energy network (HAN).  

One of their tasks is to work out how best to avoid overloading distribution networks by improving the interaction between the load and the electrical power system.   If electricity companies are to draw electricity from the home at off-peak periods, it is as well they do so without allowing food to go bad or switching the TV or dishwasher off at the wrong time.  The smart meter, communicating with the HAN, will play a major role in building these intelligent systems.  

Engineering and mining is, of course, a major part of the region’s industrial heritage, so it is perhaps not surprising that scientists should dig underground for inspiration on renewable energy. Cardiff University’s Seren project, which runs from 2010-2015, aims to help develop and commercialise technologies such as ground source heat pumps (finding ways to improve their efficiency) and carbon dioxide storage in deep coal seams.