I attended the 3rd RD20 International Summer School in Golden, Colorado between the 16th and 20th of June 2025. This was hosted by the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
This was a great week spent learning from different sectors working towards the clean energy transition. I had the opportunity to both present some of my own work and partake in a group project. The week also included tours of NREL’s incredible labs, a trip to Breckenridge at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and a bar where you could pour your own pints! The week provided some great opportunities to meet people from across the globe who are all working towards net zero in their respective institutes.
I presented a poster on some recent work completed regarding the effect of transmission system availability on the Great Britain electricity network. This was done using our Strathclyde European Electricity Market Model. The model focuses on a 14-zone Great Britain electricity system within a wider European system. This is in the form of a unit-commitment problem, which schedules generation and storage in order to minimise costs.
The work demonstrated some key results on system curtailment, carbon emissions and marginal prices when looking at transmission system availability on the GB electricity network in a 2030 scenario year. This work can be further explored in the upcoming conference proceedings from the 2025 CIGRE Canada Symposium.
This work also forms part of my PhD, which looks at addressing some of the challenges of integrating large capacities of wind into the future GB electricity network. In particular, it involves the development of a co-optimisation tool looking at maximising revenues from building electricity and/or hydrogen infrastructure to transport energy from future offshore wind farms.
I had the privilege of working on and presenting a group project with some of the great early career researchers also attending the week. The project looked at pitching a start-up business proposal to tackle some of the issues in modernising the aging electricity grid. We presented our idea of a smart switcher to coordinate microgrids. This was a great way to meet and network with other attendees, and partake in an activity a bit out of the comfort zone of standard engineering work.
As part of this exciting week, NREL hosted us for two site visits. We had the opportunity to tour many of their facilities. This included their solar, bioenergy and wave energy testing laboratories. Their wind energy facilities also proved to be impressive, with some great testing labs for all the different components that make up a wind turbine. This was followed by an equally fascinating tour of their Energy Systems Integration Facility, where they demonstrated some really cool aspects of integrating large mega-watt systems, while working on energy efficiency and decarbonisation of them.
We had a really great trip to the town of Breckenridge at the foot of the Rocky Mountains as part of the weekly activities. The trip provided some great views of the Rocky Mountains, a fun gondola ride up the mountain, a quaint town with great shops, and some pretty good peanut butter ice cream! This was definitely one of the highlights of the week for me.
Overall, this trip provided some exciting insights into other renewable energy sectors all working towards net zero and valuable connections with people situated across the globe, all at a similar career research stage.