This theme explores concepts around the real and tangible need for research and development around wake effects, yaw errors and local terrain effects on wind turbine yields. These effects include the influence of forestry and other sources of surface roughness, the influence of other turbines within a wind farm on adjacent wind farms (offshore and onshore). Probing these issues is complex and the LiDAR family of products and associated expertise at TG sees huge demand for services in this sector. There is need to perform analysis including vertical profiling and nacelle mounted and horizontal scanning. Distributed energy is essentially a physically smaller generation and profiling technology. It concentrates usually on onsite generation and the consumption of energy produced on the same site (autoproduction or self-consumption). This usually includes small and/or modular energy generation and storage technologies that provide energy or electric capacity where it is locally needed.

This theme includes technologies such as tidal and wave energies, bioenergy including anaerobic digestion and off-grid energy systems incorporating wind, solar, EVs and storage.  Breaking the barriers to deployment of these technologies especially in SME and commercial contexts will be key to decarbonisation of current heating and transport systems. The Zero Carbon theme encompasses many technologies which are in the development or early deployment stages in Ireland. This may include technologies which are mature in other areas of the world, but have not yet found the correct business case in Ireland. Our research also enables the optimisation of energy use in business and industry sectors to facilitate cost savings and numerous additional benefits including improving air quality, protecting the environment, and bolstering energy security

This research theme focuses on incorporating renewable energy, distributed generation, energy storage, thermally activated technologies, and demand response into the electric distribution and transmission system. A systems approach is utilised to conduct integration development and demonstrations to address technical, economic, regulatory, and institutional barriers for using renewable and distributed systems including micro-grids and peer-to-peer energy sharing. In addition to fully addressing operational issues, the integration also establishes viable business models for incorporating these technologies into capacity planning, grid operations, and demand-side management.