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Jason Ford
Jason Ford
News Editor
Checking the fine detail
Are you a business owner who winces when grumblings of “too many Chiefs, not enough Indians” emanate from the shop floor?
If so, a four-day conference organised by the IMechE could go some way to making your managers more effective.
‘Essential Management Skills for Engineers’, taking place from Wednesday at Keele University, contains workshops and lectures that the organizers say will introduce practical techniques for better project management, process improvement, financial management, negotiation and facilitation.
For companies, the event is expected to improve communication and team-working whilst strengthening business-to-business contacts. Individuals will likely find the event helpful with regard to motivation, creativity and productivity.
Tomorrow marks the close of a call for proposals that can enhance the awareness of soldiers to the visual cues associated with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
The research call from the Ministry of Defence Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) is, according to CDE, looking for innovative ways to increase the ability of soldiers on foot to identify the cues associated with local human behaviour, atmospheric (situational) indicators and the man made changes to the environment that directly or indirectly occur when IEDs are concealed.
CDE asks that research proposals are focused towards three-month proof of concept studies that will lead towards deployable solutions.
In Suffolk this week opinions are being sought from members of the public regarding proposed 7.2GW wind farm off the Norfolk-Suffolk coast that will be built in six phases and cover a total area of approximately 6,000km2.
ScottishPower Renewables and Vattenfall plan to build phase one - dubbed East Anglia One - 25 miles off the Suffolk coast. The development would take place in an area covering 300km2 and have a proposed capacity of 1.2GW.
On Wednesday and Thursday members of the public will be able to grill the project development team in Lowestoft and Ipswich about the project, which is planned to commence in 2015, subject to consents.
Arqiva this week hosts ‘Digital switchover: The greatest project in UK broadcasting’ in Winchester.
The five-year, £700m digital TV roll-out is well underway and event organisers will be asking how to deal with replacing 5,000 existing analogue and 500 lower-power digital transmitters with a new high-power digital network.
According to the event’s publicity material, the event will look at the challenges of the project and the progress to date, including an explanation of how the roll-out plan minimises disruption to existing services, how the new network was designed, and how HD services were incorporated into the main roll-out.
Registration for this joint IET Hampshire North Network- Royal Television Society is required as places are limited.
Finally, organisers of the Energy Innovation Awards have been in touch to say that there are just two weeks left to enter the competition.
The awards - the brainchild of the Energy Innovation Centre in Cheshire - celebrate the outstanding achievements of individuals and organisations across the UK flying the flag for energy innovation and sustainability.
The organisers say they want to hear from anyone that has developed an innovative energy product or service.
The closing date for entries is Friday 15 April 2011.
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Readers' comments (4)
JohnK | 4 Apr 2011 2:00 pm
Some questions seem unaddressed here.... 1) - Is the 1.2 Gw defined as at the point of generation or at the users meters. I'm sure there must be some power loss over the 25 miles, plus whatever distance to the national grid entry. 2) Is the 1.2Gw calculated as the maximum possible output, or realistically estimated for a given average turbine availability, wind duration and wind velocity measured for the area. 3) What is the lifetime (20 years?) cost/benefit calculation given the above.
I suspect this could be a mammoth waste of money.
When are the politicians going to settle on tidal power generation as the most, if not the only, reliable renewable resource.
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Anonymous | 4 Apr 2011 3:45 pm
JohnK makes a very valid point in that the outputs linked to wind farms are all to often ,a multiple of the name plate ratings and not the actual capacity relating to their avaialbility. A figure of 30% availability is often used, however recent studies have shown that the norm is more like 20% avaialability which means there is always going to have to be a plan B. Marine technologies do seem to tick the "availability" box more so than wind.
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Anonymous | 5 Apr 2011 0:12 am
You'll find most modern wind turbines have an "availability" of about 98%. Its their actual production over a period in comparison to the their theoretical production that is the lower percentage. But as a maintenance engineer I can say that if the wind did blow 98% of the time they'd produce.
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Ben Mack | 5 Apr 2011 9:43 am
As I understand it, "availability" is the percentage of time that they produce electricity, but doesn't indicate how much electricity they actually generate when the wind is blowing (which obviously varies with wind speed). I think the average actual output of turbines is the most relevant figure, as indicated by the Wind Power Density (WPD). The wind may blow in East Anglia for 98% of the year, but the actual power produced, averaged over a year, is probably only 20-30% of the rated 1.2GW
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