PhD Studentship - Development of Next Generation Megawatt Scale Wind Energy Power Converters

The successful candidate will work under the guidance of leading industry and academic experts on a project exploring the use of state-of-art power electronics to deliver gains in both efficiency and reliability in the clean energy sector. Outputs from this project will influence real world technology, leading to industry scale testing with one of the global leaders in wind energy.

The position will be based within Edinburgh University’s, world leading, Institute of Energy Systems with regular contact and engagement with the Siemens Gamesa R&D centre in Keele, UK. Funding is provided for three and a half years covering tuition fees, travel/conference budget and an enhanced, tax free, PhD stipend of £19,000/year equating to an equivalent gross salary of approximately £23,000.

The PhD student will be joining a team at Edinburgh including other PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, with significant interaction also expected with a collaborating research team within the University of Bristol. Funding is available for conference attendance as well as training events

Technical Summary: The project will investigate power electronic architectures for the next generation of off-shore wind turbines.  Research will address medium term challenges of exploiting of the completely different characteristics of SiC-MOSFET (compared to silicon IGBT) on choice of wind-turbine converter topology and connection voltage with the target of the most /total cost optimised solution in ac-connected offshore wind turbines. Specific challenges such as high dv/dt values and increased levels of radiated EMI that arise when using wide-bandgap semiconductors will be investigated, and solutions developed and experimentally tested. This project will involve a substantial amount of experimentation suing the high-voltage and high-current test facilities at Edinburgh (see images below),

Early application is advised as the position will be filled once a suitable candidate is identified.