Inaugural Lecture of Professor Alasdair McDonald, Chair in Renewable Energy Technologies

The Monster Turbines and Scary Engineering Science of Wind Energy “No, it’s the work of the devil!” That is reportedly the response of local villagers, when Professor James Blyth offered to light the streets of Marykirk in the 1880s. They were referring to his newly invented wind turbine that he had developed in the garden of his holiday home. Ever since that day, wind turbines have frightened some members of the public and on occasion they have been demonised in some sections of the media. During this pre-Halloween lecture, we’ll look at wind turbine technology, explore how those turbines work and reflect on some of the challenges faced by modern wind turbine designers. Although some of the modern turbines are monstrously large and the engineering science challenges are fiendish, we don’t need to be spooked. Biography Alasdair McDonald is an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer by training. He is particularly interested in the design of electrical generators for large offshore wind turbines. In 2004 he joined the University of Edinburgh for his PhD, going onto work as postdoctoral researcher and then spinning-out a company with colleagues (developing a novel permanent magnet generator technology) in 2009. He returned to academia in 2012, as a Lecturer in Wind Turbine Technology in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde. He re-joined Edinburgh in 2021, taking up the Chair in Renewable Energy Technology in the Institute for Energy Systems (IES) and teaching Wind Energy in the Mechanical Engineering Discipline. Since 2023 he has been the Head of IES, a cross disciplinary research institute which examines the design of sustainable energy systems, studying how we generate, transmit, store and use sustainable energy. Although scared of many things, wind turbines don’t frighten him. Further information Professor Alasdair McDonald School of Engineering, Univresity of Edinburgh profile: https://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/about/people... Professor Alasdair McDonald Research Explorer: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/pers... Inaugural lecture event page: https://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/about/events...