Wesley Williams

https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/ocean_energy/tesla-battery-storage-successfully-integrated-with-tidal-20181031

https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/innovative-floating-tidal-power-turbine-generates-3-gwh-energy-its-first-year-testing.html

In Portland, I attended the IEEE Energy Conversion Conference and Exposition, which featured students presenting magnetic research that we have been working on recently.  It was also a good chance to catch up in person (instead of phone call or Google Hangout) with Jonathan, who was kind enough to host a collection of other magnetics and drives researchers for dinner one night.

After a week back in Charlotte, I was off to the Outer Banks to meet with M. Muglia and M. Remige of the UNC Coastal Studies Institute and Jennettes Pier.  We had some quality meetings about data sets, educational outreach, and wind turbine performance at the coast.  I even got see one of the 10 kW turbines in action under tropical storm force winds due to the remnants of Hurricane Michael).

The first part of August saw members of the magnetic gearing research team head to Boone, NC for the 2018 Appalachian Energy Summit.  It was three days of solid presentations, workshops, and networking with energy professionals from across the region and the nation as a whole.  Sina and David also brought back an honorable mention in the student research poster competition.

Brent Summerville at Appalachian State University was kind enough to give a tour of the Beech Mountain Small Wind Research and Demonstration Site after the recent Appalachian Energy Summit.

The mobile lab designed and constructed by the building sciences students provided some welcome shelter from the rain.

I featured a number of clever design elements including stools/storage that mount of the wall when not in use.

We got the magnetic gearing researchers and alumni last week to celebrate Kang’s successful PhD defense and landing a new job up in Boston.  Kang has worked on multiple magnetic gearbox topologies over the past four years and we wish him the best as he heads off to his new job.  

It was great having Hydrovision in Charlotte last week.  The MHK track had some great presentations and it was an awesome opportunity to teach down some new vendors.  It was good to see a number of familiar faces from the NC Renewable Ocean Energy Program, including Jonathan Colby, Mike Muglia, and Bill Staby.  One interesting participant was partnering with Oak Ridge to additively manufacture components for their microturbines.