First Speaker: Dr Quan Li

Title: Superconducting Technology and Research Topics

Abstract:
Superconductivity, discovered in 1911, opened a door for the whole world to an amazing type of material qualified with absolutely zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic fields. Over the past 20 years, extraordinary breakthroughs in superconductivity and its applications have been achieved demonstrating an unstoppable revolution is on its way.This speech covers basic principles of superconductors, their latest applications and Dr Quan Li's major research projects.

Bio:
Dr Quan Li holds BEng and MEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University China, and PhD in Applied Superconductivity from University of Cambridge UK. He was awarded Young Scientist Fellowship by Japan JSPS and was working in Kyoto University Japan. In 2014, He joined the IES as a lecturer and his research interests mainly cover Superconducting Technology, Power System and Renewable Energy.

Second Speaker: Dr Harry van der Weijde

Title: Risk Management in Energy Economics and Wholesale Electricity Markets

Abstract:
Any decisions about investment in electricity markets, whether in generation or transmission capacity, are made under a huge amount of uncertainty about future costs, policies, demand, and many other variables. Since these investments have very long lead times and are usually irreversible, the uncertainties are very important. Different techniques have been developed to deal with them, such as stochastic and robust optimisation, but these usually assume that everybody is risk-neutral. In the real world, almost all investors and policy makers are risk-averse. This seminar will address how risk aversion can be included in large transmission and generation investment models, and what implications this has. It will also briefly consider the role of financial markets.

Bio:
Harry van der Weijde is a new(-ish) Chancellor's Fellow in energy policy. He holds an MSc in Economics from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Spatial Economics from the Free University of Amsterdam, where he was also employed as a researcher working on the economics of competition in transportation networks (which are just like electricity networks but less interesting). In between, he worked at the University of Cambridge's Energy Policy Research Group, where he tried to figure out where and when to invest in new electricity transmission without spending more money than you absolutely have to, and what the benefits of electricity market coupling are. He is now working on lots of different things, including the effect of risk aversion on investment in electricity generation and transmission (which you will hear something about in this seminar), imperfect competition in energy market models, interactions between electricity and gas markets, and energy storage. Despite being an economist by training, he can run an OPF model and explain what reactive power is, so he pretends to be a little bit of an engineer.