Research Engineer, Offshore Electrical Infrastructures, ORE Catapult

Biography

Michael Smailes joined the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult (then Narec) in 2013 as part of his three-year industrial placement while studying for his Engineering Doctorate in the Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) at Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Exeter Universities. As part of this programme he worked on the Hybrid HVDC Transformer, a novel technology capable of eliminating the offshore HVDC and HVAC platforms reducing the cost of HVDC transmission by 15%. Work on this project created two patent applications concerning a novel control algorithm for the Modular Multilevel Converter as well as a number of prominent publications. In 2016, Michael joined ORE Catapult full-time, working as a Research Engineer in the Electrical Infrastructure Knowledge Area. During his time at the company he has delivered a number of projects involving transformer efficiency and converter testing, battery storage and analysis of the IEC 61400 and 61000 standards.