Final UK-India Joint Virtual Clean Energy Centre Conference held ONLINE on 24-25 February 2022
The 4th and final UK-India Joint Virtual Clean Energy Centre (JVCEC) Conference was held on 24-25 February 2022 online. Hosted by Loughborough University UK, the event was a joint conference organised by UKICERI (UK-India Clean Energy Research Institute), IUCERCE (India-UK Centre for Education and Research in Clean Energy) and JUICE (Joint UK-India Clean Energy Centre), and funded by the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Attendees included over 100 UK and Indian academics from Kharagpur, Bombay, Kanpur, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Shibpur, Madras, and Thiruvananthapuram, and UK academics and researchers from Loughborough, Imperial, Exeter, Southampton, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and Warwick. Dr JBV Reddy, Technology Missions Division in Indian DST, and Christopher Carlton, Senior Portfolio Manager – Energy & Decarbonisation UKRI-EPSRC also participated in the event.
Chaired by the UK lead Dr Murray Thomson, the conference was opened by the Principal Investigators of the three centres, Prof Chandan Chakraborty (UKICERI), Prof BG Fernandes (IUCERCE) and Dr Murray Thomson (JUICE) giving an overview of collaborative activities within the three centres and highlighting the key outcomes throughout the duration of the project.
The conference programme included 5 research themed sessions, namely Power Systems, Power Electronics, Energy Storage, Microgrids and Solar Photovoltaics. In these sessions, 18 UK and India ‘double-act’ partners jointly presented their collaborative work tackling many challenges in the Clean Energy Research. In addition, flash poster presentations by the partners in the three centres were also given in the conference. The presentations were followed by expert session chairs facilitating engaging and fruitful discussion in each of these key clean energy research areas.
In the final session, Dr JBV Reddy, Indian DST gave his concluding remarks on the JVCEC consortium and expressed his thanks on behalf of DST, to all investigators and researchers for a successful completion of this programme. Looking ahead after the completion of this consortium, a number of investigators presented their new collaborative projects and explained how these new projects are built upon the JVCEC research activities. Finally, Prof Bhim Singh, IIT Delhi and Prof Surya Doolla, IIT Bombay, conveyed their perspective on the future opportunities for collaborative research in Clean Energy between the two countries.
The detailed programme could be found here:
JVCEC Conference Program 24-25 Feb 2022
The conference brought together the leading academics in the Clean Energy field from the UK and India and enabled valuable discussions on key challenges and collaborative work in the integration of solar PV, energy storage and electrical networks. Collaborations between UK and Indian academics within the three centres, JUICE, IUCERCE and UKICERI, helped strengthen the links and identify emerging possibilities for collaboration between the two countries in Clean Energy in the future.
The UK-India Joint Virtual Clean Energy Centre (JVCEC) will be officially completed on 31st March 2022.