Institution news
Ed explained his role and involvement with regards to the conference, critical industry challenges and why it is important for engineers to attend.
Q: Please briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience with regards to wind turbines
Ed Hall (EH): I have spent my 14 year career as a professional engineer in the wind industry, exclusively focusing on the operational phase and asset management of large scale wind turbines and wind parks, and the technical challenges which come with that. Today, I work as an Engineering Manager for wind park owner-operator RWE, delivering the complete set of operations, maintenance and asset management services required to keep London Array delivering renewable energy to the UK.
Q: What, in your experience, has been the biggest roadblock for utilising technology in your sector?
EH: From and Operations and Maintenance perspective in offshore wind, reliability is priceless. Before you even get to the point of work on a turbine where you may wish to deploy your technology or innovation, you already need to have overcome the environment, the weather, transit across open seas and to have come fully prepared with all the right tools, equipment, parts and the knowhow of what you’re going to do. Therefore, any uncertainty that a reliable outcome will be achieved is something that many operational colleagues are not willing to gamble on, without tried and trusted results. Often I hear about many really great ideas and innovations which are not robustly prepared for an operational deployment nor considering a realistic, holistic business case. I feel this could often be down to limited experience being available from the wider industry which can be filtered into developing innovations which are required to continue to push the industry forward.
Q: What key topics are you excited to speak about at Wind Turbine User Group 2023?
EH: In contrast to what I have just said, I’m happy to say there are many successful examples where technology has been really effectively been deployed which has been a game changer. I am excited to share some of my positive experiences that I have been fortunate enough to work with where there has been successful utilisation of technology and innovation to push the industry forward, albeit by small steps at a time. Hopefully this can offer encouragement to not just settle for the ‘status quo’, or ‘path of least resistance’ when it comes to asset management and O&M best practices.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme, and why?
EH: Being details orientated, I am really interested to hear about practical solutions that have real world applications. I’m very pleased to see a number of sessions which are talking about improvements and optimisation that can be derived from and applied to already existing infrastructure. There’s often more output that can be gained from the assets which are already built.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this conference?
EH Engineers, from all disciplines, are well placed to be able to identify the problems and challenges that are faced by this rapidly growing industry…but more importantly engineers are uniquely equipped to bring their skills to solve these challenges and find real world applications to innovations that are developed from other industries.
Wind Turbine User Group 2023 will be taking place on 17-18 May at One Birdcage Walk, London. To view the two-day programme and book your place, please visit the event website.