Joao Cruz joins Garrad Hassan Marine Renewables Team - 28th Nov 2007In January 2008 Joao Cruz will join Garrad Hassan (GH), where he will lead wave energy activities within the GH Marine Renewables Group. Joao’s experience with research institutes and technology developers around Europe will further strengthen GH’s capabilities in the rapidly developing wave energy sector. Joao is well known in the wave energy industry with previous connections to IST-Technical University of Lisbon, The University of Edinburgh, Teamwork Technology (Archimedes Wave Swing) and more recently Pelamis Wave Power Ltd, where he was an active member of the Cost Reduction and Performance Enhancement Department. Joao’s expertise spans across resource assessment, numerical and experimental modelling of wave energy converters and development of tools in an operational environment. Joao brings with him a unique combination of R&D and field experience obtained in Portugal and in the UK at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). Recently Joao also edited a book entitled ‘Ocean Wave Energy’ (Springer-Verlag) which is one of the first textbooks in the field.
Robert Rawlinson-Smith, leader of the GH Marine Renewables Group, commented ‘Joao’s arrival clearly demonstrates GH’s aim to become a world leader in the provision of engineering consultancy services to the wave energy sector.‘ GH to provide prototype controller for tidal turbine - 19th Jun 2007GH will undertake the design and implementation of the control system for Tidal Generation Limited’s (TGL) 500kW prototype tidal turbine.The work, supported by the DTI Technology Programme, will build on experience developed by GH in the wind sector where the company GH has been responsible for the design and implementation of a large number of prototype control systems. This project will be the second control design and implementation that GH undertakes in the marine renewables sector, GH having already been selected by Rotech to supply the prototype control system for Lunar Energy’s RTT turbine. GH is well equipped to meet the challenges of providing robust, high quality control systems in this new field of renewable energy. Tony Mercer, Principal Control Engineer at GH explains ‘GH has developed a unique capability to provide innovative control systems deployable on a range of different hardware platforms backed up with state of the art hardware and software testing tools' The Lunar Energy and TGL prototype turbines are to be installed at the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney sometime in 2008/9. |