Quote: Fred Gibbs

‘Being part of IDCORE has been almost too good to be true.  The first year of the programme was one of the best years of my life, and now, working for QED Naval, I am in a place I want to be, doing what I want to do.  The work is challenging but the project is really well defined and I know that the outcome will make a difference to the company and potentially the tidal sector.

QED is a fascinating company, they are applying a unique approach to the tidal turbine sector and they are achieving results – it is very rewarding to be able to make an active contribution to their success.’

Sponsor

Set up as a naval architecture consultancy, early in its life QED Naval took the decision to focus on the marine renewables sector working with Scottish Enterprise before concentrating on tidal turbines which led to the investment in their JV partnership company Tocardo with HydroWing.  They are bringing key, operationally focussed design skills into the sector, supporting the development of turbine technologies that will operate at much lower cost by minimising marine operations.

The partnership has made very effective use of the potential offered by engaging with IDCORE.  There are now two IDCORE researchers working at QED in addition to the two that had already been taken on by HydroWing.

Quote: Jeremy Smith, Founder and Managing Director, QED Naval

‘I have worked with Andrew Aveyard in the IDCORE team for many years. I have been really impressed by the impact that their researchers have been making in the team at HydroWing, so when we started looking for someone to support the development of our utility-scale turbine, IDCORE was a natural choice. 

We are very fortunate to have access to this resource with our HQ based in Edinburgh. We have had other engagements with academic research and none come close for comparison with the quality and value of the IDCore program.

I always look for passion in the people in my team and Fred has that in spades – he is making a real difference to our work.’

Project

Fred’s project is working on the electrical generation aspects of a utility-scale turbine, where the key challenge is matching the turbine design to the available tidal energy resources.  He is exploring the thermal signature of the generator within well-characterised but highly variable flow regimes.  Ultimately, they are looking to optimise the turbine performance and efficiency by better understanding for how long it can be ‘overdriven’ and what the implications of this are for the overall design process.

Fred came to IDCORE from a five-year integrated Masters course in Physics at the University of St Andrews.  As part of this course he had undertaken two internships with a large defence company, specialising in radar.  This taught him a lot about systems engineering and also commercial skills that are proving very useful now that he is with QED, where he is finding it an interesting contrast to be working within a much smaller organisation.