Funding secured for further offshore wind energy projects

The School of Engineering has been awarded €820k of a €4.2M grant from the Horizon Europe’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks, to develop more efficient and reliable renewable energy technologies.

ADOreD (Accelerating the Deployment of Offshore wind using DC technology) aims to train fifteen international students to produce a pool of highly skilled and employable energy experts. The project will bring together 19 organisations from nine countries across the UK, China and Europe.

Cardiff University will train four of the PhD students and host others on secondment. The candidates will specialise in wind-energy and direct current (DC) grids for transmitting renewable energy to electricity grids and customers. The researcher’s time will be split between industry and academia, providing exposure to a range of policy makers, industries, academics and customers.

The consortium is part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme and, within the MSCA programme, is a Doctoral Network, previously Initial Training Network (ITN).

As the first in the ITN focusing on offshore wind power and DC technologies, the group includes a unique combination of academics and industries and engages in interdisciplinary and international collaboration. The consortium has experienced continuous success in the PhD training in the area of renewable energy and DC technology, receiving national and global recognition.

The consortium has developed through a series of successful past projects, all led by Professor Jun Liang at the School of Engineering, Cardiff University. These include MEDOW (Multi-terminal DC grid for offshore wind) from 2013-2017, which led to InnoDC (Innovative tools for offshore wind & Direct Current grids) from 2017 to 2021. The current ADOreD project which will run for 4 years, starting in September 2022.

The groups projects continue to grow and develop, including recruiting more academic researchers and increasing their collaborations with industry.

More information about Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks is available at: https://marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/doctoral-networks