We recently had the privilege of participating in the DoB Academy’s Japanese exchange summer school in the Netherlands. Our CEO & Founder, Dr Andrew Jenkins delivered a guest lecture on ‘offshore power network design’ to a diverse group of university students and young professionals from Japan, funded by the Nippon Foundation.
For several years now, we’ve had the privilege of participating in this unique summer program that brings Japanese students to the Netherlands for an intensive four-week educational experience. This program, a collaboration between DOB-Academy and TU Delft, offers students a rich blend of theoretical knowledge and practical application in offshore engineering.
The curriculum features high-quality lectures delivered by experienced educators from both institutions, complemented by insights from industry professionals such as Kinewell Energy serving as guest lecturers. What sets this program apart is its emphasis on hands-on learning – students immediately put their newly acquired knowledge to the test through engaging practical games, real-world case studies, and challenging assignments.
Our involvement in this program has not only allowed us to contribute to the education of future offshore engineers but has also provided valuable insights into emerging talent and fresh perspectives in our field.
Andrew’s lecture followed a DOB exercise of playing dot-to-dot with cable, where the students worked in teams to develop a cable layout with redundancy and the opposing team got to cut a wire and see the impact on energy generation. His session allowed participants to understand the real-world challenges of offshore power network design. He focused on learning about inter-array cable layout optimisation concepts and how our KLOC software is used by industry leaders to reduce the cost of offshore wind. He also explained the importance of export system considerations early in the project and how our KDOTS software helps make risk-informed decisions.
The students then got to try it for themselves using our free educational tool EduKLOC which is based on our commercial KLOC software. They competed to see who could design the lowest cost windfarm. Their designs ranged from £17.7m to £26.7m, when we ran the same problem through KLOC to design the layout in substantially shorter time, it would have cost just £15.5m – a saving of £2.2m or 13%. Therefore showing the students that utilising software such as KLOC is key for the industry to achieve its growth targets.
