February 14, 2012
There’s an often-discussed gap between the work of academia and industry: work that’s too applied for academics but too academic for many companies to undertake profitably. Applied research is a broad term that can be used to describe this missing work. In the United States and elsewhere, various organisations fill the gap: the National Laboratories, start-up companies and autonomous industrial research and development teams are all on a spectrum bridging academia and industry.
At academic end of this gap is where CREDIT works in Ireland. CREDIT is an applied research centre but with a significant teaching and training component.
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About CREDIT, Projects (listed by subject), Projects (listed by year) | 
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Posted by niallmcmahon
February 2, 2012
CREDIT has completed over twenty renewable energy consultancy projects. Some of these were funded by Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Voucher scheme.
Organisations we have worked with commercially in Ireland, as consultants or partners, include: Airtricity, Igen, RPS Group, Veelite Lighting, SCF Processing, SEAI, IWEA, Measuresoft, Cool Power, HEAnet, the BMW Regional Assembly, as well as LEADER companies in the the north-east of Ireland.
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Posted by niallmcmahon
January 16, 2012
Niall McMahon and Raymond Byrne sit on the Irish Wind Energy Association’s Small and Medium Wind Committee (ISMWC).
Raymond Byrne is Ireland’s national representative to relevant International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards committees. These are the IEA’s Wind Task 27 group and the group responsible for drafting the third edition of the international IEC 61400-2 standard. Wind Task 27 is concerned with ensuring that consumer labels for small wind turbines display accurate information; IEC 61400-2 is the most important international standard for the design of small wind turbines.
Our standards development work forms part of CREDIT’s small and medium wind research effort.
Comments Off | Projects (listed by subject), Small and Medium Wind Group, Standards Development, Wind | Permalink
Posted by niallmcmahon
January 16, 2012
CREDIT is one of six partners in the BioMara project, a six million Euro INTERREG IVA funded collaboration investigating the development of sustainable fuels from marine biomass.
CREDIT’s role is to investigate extraction and characterisation of oils from algae and investigate small-scale anaerobic digestion technology development. CREDIT has four staff members dedicated to researching routes to biogas and bioethanol from marine biomass. This includes characterising the marine biomass available around Irish, Northern Irish and Scottish coasts; it adds to the overall research effort being coordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Scotland.
Further information can be found at the BioMara website or contact Paul MacArtain for more information.
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Posted by niallmcmahon
November 9, 2011
A 1.5 kW test wind turbine is located on-campus at DkIT. Its intended purpose is to provide a real test-platform for the prototype overspeed device. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by niallmcmahon
November 9, 2011
CREDIT operates a large flow-battery electricity storage system. This is coupled to the campus Vestas V52 wind turbine. We believe this to be the first installation of its kind in Europe, i.e. a flow-battery with a large-scale stand-alone wind turbine. The battery was installed primarily as a research platform.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
CREDIT’s ZBB flow-battery is used to investigate how best to use electricity storage in conjunction with an on-site wind turbine. When should battery power be used in place of grid power, for example? This work is ongoing.
Electricity storage research at CREDIT is led by Raymond Byrne.
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Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
The Dundalk 2020 project is an FP6 funded project and is co-ordinated by Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. CREDIT is part of the technical advisory team to this project, the goal of which is to create a zone of energy sustainability in Dundalk. CREDIT is also involved in research work packages both in Dundalk and with other European partners associated the project.
See the Dundalk 2020 website or contact Raymond Byrne for more information about CREDIT’s involvement.
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Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
Complementing our flow-battery research, a SCADA system is under development. The system will extract and display data from the wind turbine’s control system and the power meters in the campus electrical compound.
Read the rest of this entry »
Comments Off | Projects (listed by subject), Storage, Wind | Permalink
Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
Straightforward mathematical and numerical techniques can be used to build useful models of small- and medium-sized wind turbines. At present, we are working on a platform that can be used to underpin small- and medium-sized wind turbine design and standards development. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
Up until December 2006 CREDIT co-ordinated a pilot Community Energy Initiative (CEI) programme. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by niallmcmahon
October 19, 2011
A computer model of the Irish economy was developed to simulate the economy’s transition from fossil fuel usage to renewable energy. The model was based on Slesser’s Energy and Capital Creation Options (ECCO) model. Some of the results from this work were presented in Before the Wells Run Dry, Ireland’s Transition to Renewable Energy. This was edited by Richard Douthwaite and published in 2003. The book is available to read for free online.
This project was enabled with assistance from the Department of the Environment.
Contact Raymond Byrne for more information.
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Posted by niallmcmahon
