What a busy week!!

The week commencing 29th January was a tad busy for our Technical Partner Dr Charlie Elliott!!

Tuesday 30th was the Reinforcing the Grid for the Roll Out of Electrical Vehicles event in London. A very well attended event with interesting and diverse talks. It was particularly interesting to hear from National Grid who think that provided simple charging delay is used so not everybody charges starting at 5-6pm, the increase in demand is very manageable. They think with 150 or so clusters of rapid chargers along key roads (which are often close to the HV grid) a very high percentage of the population will be covered and really range anxiety should become a thing of the past.

Wednesday 31st was the Vehicle To Grid event organised by Cenex and LEVEL in Nottingham.  There were a wide range of talks and it was clear that there is still much debate about how people will be able to generate revenue from V2G. One thing is for certain is that it is a great opportunity and that specialist kit available at a sensible price needs to be developed. Watch this space as V2G is a perfect space for SPS given it’s past experience and capabilities!!

Thursday 1st February was the Power Electronics Grand Challenges meeting in Birmingham organised by Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network, Power Electronics UK and the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult. This meeting was held to discuss direction for potential work with the CSA Catapult and to review whether the 3 grand challenges previously identified with PEUK were still valid. There was much lively debate and the possibility of rolling in the high power requirements for electric powered short haul flights was thrown into the mix. Very interesting times!!!

Charlie commented that it is very clear that new and challenging Power Electronics applications are being identified all the time. Bring it on!!