IET West Yorkshire Events

Decarbonisation of the maritime sector is driving a transition from conventional AC power systems to DC electrification, enabled by advances in efficiency, controllability, and integration of low-carbon technologies. We have completed a research project demonstrating the technical viability of hybrid energy storage systems combining batteries, supercapacitors, and superconducting magnetic energy storage to balance energy and power demands in shipboard microgrids. Building on this work, ongoing research focuses on power architectures based on primary and secondary DC grids for large vessels. This has improved understanding of DC fault conditions and short-circuit behaviour in shipboard microgrids, informing the performance and protection requirements of DC solid-state circuit breakers. A dedicated experimental test rig has also been developed to characterise DC SSCB performance.

Our Earth has shown wild variations in climate over the last few hundred million years. The ultimate driver of climate is the Sun, which has increased in luminosity by 30% over it's 4,500 million year current life. We will see how the sun works and how it influences the Earth and our climate on ever shorter time scales, including the 11 year sunspot cycle. Finally, we will see how recently CO2 has become increasingly important and look at the most likely future.