The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills (IUSS) Committee held its first evidence gathering session on ‘Engineering in Government’ towards the end of last month. Government departments presently enjoy the benefit of ‘science’ advice when they need it (see last week’s comment), but ‘engineering’ does not appear to have quite the same degree of representation in the corridors of power. That imbalance is now being addressed, as the institutions representing the engineering professions were given the opportunity to air their concerns at this initial hearing.
The Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) was represented by deputy president, Professor Christopher Snowden, who claims that the presentations made to the Committee clearly demonstrated the value that the institutions, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the profession at large can add to the development of government policies, in addition to the delivery of government projects and programmes.
In its written evidence, the IET said that it considered the government’s use of engineering advice and, in particular, its use of resources like the professional engineering institutions was “ad hoc and uncoordinated in nature”. The IET believes the government does not formally acknowledge the role of engineering in policy making and may even be unaware of the resources available to it.
In a widely representative written submission to the IUSS Committee, the RAE cited the relatively recent example of energy policy (particularly the viability of sustainable sources), which it believes has suffered due to a lack of engineering input at an early stage. “A sound engineering insight would have given a clearer picture of the contributions of the different energy technologies, the timescales in which they could conceivably come on-stream and the measures necessary to mitigate risk – whether technical, political, commercial or otherwise,” the Academy asserts.
Engineers’ views, says the RAE, are also essential to identify barriers to certain policy solutions as well as ways to circumvent or overcome them. Micro-generation of electricity through wind power might be recommended, it says, but this recommendation is undermined by the fact that the electricity grid is not currently designed to cope with the feeding back of large amounts of power. With the exception of some locally engineered solutions, the national electricity distribution system is essentially designed to be one way.
The RAE offers similar examples of such shortcomings in its submission to the Committee, including the ‘Eco-Towns’ Challenge Panel, which had no engineering input; large public IT procurement and the lack of practical engineering assessment, and the limited opportunities afforded for engineering input into the Defence Science Advisory Council.
The RAE also mentions the government’s preference for procuring engineering advice from external consultants – advice that is often of “variable quality” it asserts. The Academy gives the example of recent reports prepared for the low carbon cars strategy, which were produced by third party consultants acting under considerable time constraints. In the RAE’s view, these contained inaccuracies that would be obvious to an engineer with relevant expertise, but not necessarily to an official without that expertise or access to it.
Engineering expertise is needed within government departments to ensure the quality of the procurement and quality control of that advice.
There are good models of engineering in government from around the world. The RAE cites one or two examples in its submission to the Committee, including that of the USA, where there is a constitutional relationship between the Executive, the Legislature and the National Academies. In China, too, there exists a close relationship between engineering and government; according to the RAE, the status of engineers within the Chinese administration is something that the UK could draw lessons from.
Les Hunt
Editor
Newsletter reader, Jerry Guess had the following interesting questions relating to guest writer, Robin Cowley’s recent article on the application of High Efficiency motors:
(paste the following link into your browser to view Mr Cowley’s article: http://www.dpaonthenet.net/channels/channel3editorial19680.aspx)
“I would like to ask what Mr Cowley’s view is regarding the up and coming new regulations re Eff1 (IE2). If the starting current goes up for high efficiency motors, all those companies that pay for current peaks (larger users) will be paying more (particularly if they use DOL starting). If the system being driven has, say, 60 stop/starts per hour, this is going to show up in the energy bill.
In my opinion, keeping down the inertia of the motor (a physically smaller rotor~ so smaller start up current) matters in this case. It thus ends up being a compromise between the energy efficiency of the motor and the starting current (dependent on stop/starts per hour). So, maybe there is a case to be made for the lower Eff2 in some applications. Eff1 or better is fine for a continuous running application but at high stop/starts, isn’t using Eff1 going to present a ‘running cost increase and an energy usage increase’ rather than a saving? I think the break-even point is about 40 stop/starts per hour between Eff1 and Eff2.”
Robin Cowley replies:
“Jerry - thanks for your questions, which I will try to take one at a time:
1. The new regulations. As you may know IEC 60034-30 has now been approved and is either in it’s publication phase or about to be published, so we have a defined level of efficiency for LV motors from 0.75 through 375kW at IE1 (Old Eff2); IE2 (Old Eff1) and IE3 (like an Eff1 + or super premium efficient) levels of efficiency. The title of IE4 has been ‘logged’ but has no values yet and as far as I know does not have an active working group either yet – one for the future. It also looks almost certain that the EU (Brussels) will legislate that all motors installed in the Eurozone must meet IE2 level after January 1 2011 and then meet IE3 level after January 1 2015. This will be done under the EuP Legislation, Lot 11 Industrial Motors.
2. My comment regarding rise in starting current for higher efficiency motors is a general comment and applies more so to ‘smaller’ LV motors than the larger type.IE Motors under say 100kW would typically have a higher % increase in starting current than say those over 100kW. This is going to vary from one manufacturer to another and also with the application type to some extent. However, in trying to keep this as general as possible, I would expect that below 37kW is where the more marked percentage increase in starting current would ‘generally’ appear.
3. As you say ‘Demand Peak’ is an issue in large users’ energy bills. However, by definition those large users would normally have their metering point at the plant main in-feed level of 11kV or higher. They would also have a very large current load on the system, whereby rendering the typical motor we are talking about (LV side) as a very small percentage of the total load on the plant. This is therefore very unlikely to be seen on the HV side where the meter will be placed, even if it was being cycled on and off continuously.
4. If for some other reason a cycled motor was going to affect the energy bill, then the most likely answer would be some form of softer starting.
5. As you point out, it is always good to try to keep rotor inertia down for cycled motors, however, some loads have much greater inertia levels so the rotor becomes insignificant anyway. Typically, the more efficient the motor, the smaller the motor, the lower the rotor inertia.
6. Again as you point out, higher efficiency motors are beneficial where their running time is highest. As stated in my paper, the application is always the primary driver and must be considered first. Efficiency should be looked at after that, as to whether an advantage can be made by going to higher efficiency.
7. In order to ascertain the best solution, a profile of ‘on time’ versus ‘off time’ would need to be assessed to come up with the best solution for each case.
I hope that helps to answer the questions you have posed.”
My thanks to Mr Guess for making these very pertinent points, and to Mr Cowley for coming up with such a comprehensive response.