Energy

Dan’s Race Report

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Daniel Chambers

This is not so much a race report as a summary of the entire year’s efforts, challenges, disappointments and successes. The culmination of all this activity was Australia’s WSC 2011, so in non-chronological fashion I’ll start there.

The most frustrating thing for a group of enthusiastic engineers is to have their efforts and aspirations thwarted by bureaucracy. But that’s exactly what happened when our shipping company refused to give us our container or even accept any form of payment. We spent an unproductive and relaxing two weeks in Darwin without a car to work on. However, what we achieved in the following fortnight after we finally got our hands on the car cannot be overstated. The car arrived in a “working” condition (we’d done some driving back in the UK at Bourn Airfield) but getting the vehicle race-ready took a huge amount of proverbial elbow grease and midnight oil.

We successfully fitted new lights and LED drivers, tested new driver controls and telemetry, performed solar battery charging tests and re-wired a few things that we’d never got around to in the UK, including the rear-view camera. The mechanical guys chipped in with a new set of wheels, worked out…
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Posted in 2011 Car, Electrical, Energy, WSC | Comments Off

The Nuclear Option

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

The definition of the word ‘nuclear’ is a simple but insufficient one: ‘of or relating to atomic nuclei’. It does not capture the immense cultural and societal stigma that such a word now holds – and will have held for 25 years, come April. The tragedy of March 11 was itself, ironically, swept away and buried by reports of an explosion at one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Even now, it is necessary to scroll past too many articles covering the Fukushima incident before even reaching news of the 30,000 dead or missing; the half-a-million displaced from their homes; the whole towns washed away.

This is not another article about Why This Is The End For Nuclear or How Fukushima Made Me Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. They are already clogging the internet and attracting all sorts of insane online versions of the sandwich board screaming “REPENT. THE END IS NIGH”. Instead, it is an attempt (of which there have also been many) to inject some perspective, some rationality and some information into the energy debate, which has been running for far longer than the past two weeks.

Although CUER is a group firmly focused…
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Posted in Energy, Renewable technology | 1 Comment

Ansys Seminar

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Lucy Fielding

On the 7th December, several CUER team members loaded Endeavour up onto the trailer and took her for a day out at the Heritage Motor Museum in Warwickshire. She enjoyed herself immensely while her handlers attended the Ansys Hybrid Electric Vehicle seminar. With this event being so relevant to what we do, as well as being hosted by one of our long-term sponsors, this was an opportunity we could not afford to miss. The event focused on how Ansys software could be used in all aspects of car design, including battery chemistry and EM-field modelling – not just aerodynamics (hands up all those who knew it was even used for aerodynamics). This was also a great opportunity to show off Endeavour once again and gave us another chance to talk to people in the automotive industry who are interested in what we do and have plenty of technical expertise to share with us.

Posted in Auto Technology, Energy, Renewable technology | Leave a comment

Carbon Capture and Storage

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Dan Wilkins

Carbon Capture and Storage

A lot of noise has been made recently about Carbon Capture and Storage technology, most recently with the UK Government backing the building of four new coal fired power stations subject to them implementing Carbon Capture and Storage (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8014295.stm).

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