Stranded? Well, thank your stars for NaREC

Mar 13 2007 By Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

It's the telephone you hope you'll never use. Alastair Gilmour reports on a company's latest development.

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If you ever get stranded on a motorway and have to call for assistance, chances are you'll be indebted to a Northumberland company. The New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC), based in Blyth, has been awarded a significant contract to power the next generation of emergency roadside telephones for the Highways Agency.

Initially worth £50,000 but potentially rising to £200,000 over two years, the contract will see another three jobs created at the fast-growing solar technology centre.

The eight-strong photovoltaic team at NaREC is currently engaged in research and development work and, with the arrival of this contract, is expanding into a medium-scale manufacturing facility.

The new roadside telephones will be powered by a state-of-the-art compact solar cell, pioneered and developed by the Photovoltaic Centre. The team, which has previously helped in the development of world advances in solar cell efficiency, beat off stiff competition to be awarded the contract by the Staffordshire-based telephone design company GAI-Tronics. The team produced a solar cell 25% more efficient than rival designs.

NaREC was set up in 2003 as a not-for-profit company to bring substantial benefits to the UK's new and renewable energy sector, providing development and testing in solar, wind, wave, electrical and tidal power.

The high-efficiency solar cells are part of a £20m Highways Agency programme to replace more than 5,000 roadside phones with new technology across the motorway and trunk road network. Using solar power will make them completely self-powered and their high efficiency will ensure they have a reliable independent power supply.

The contract is the latest in a series for the Photovoltaics Centre which was set up with £2.2m of funding from regional development agency One NorthEast and produced its first solar cell in November 2005.

The centre's chief technology officer, Dr Tim Bruton, believes the contract is a crucial step towards the continuing expansion of the technology centre.

"This is a vote of confidence in our own expertise as well as the technology we've developed here in Blyth in just six months of commercial operation," he said.

"As we continue to develop a reputation in this niche market I believe we can look forward to growing into an even larger volume production facility in the coming months and years."

Elsewhere at NaREC, its Hebburn-based high voltage testing team has secured a significant three-year testing contract for National Grid substation equipment. The contract, anticipated to occupy up to 20% of NaREC's high-voltage testing schedule, will allow the former Reyrolle laboratory to expand its team and facilities through 2007.

This investment enhances the laboratory's long-standing commitment to electrical testing and means that NaREC will also become the guardian of the UK High Voltage Reference Measurement Standards, a role formerly held by the National Physics Laboratory in London.

And, across Europe, wind turbine production is racing ahead as the wind energy market rapidly reaches commercial competitiveness. With the first 12 months of continuous independent blade testing in the UK nearing completion, NaREC is discovering how blade technology is the manufacturers' key to competitive advantage.

Dr Richard Court, NaREC's wind technology and materials specialist, said: "The quality of turbine blades will be one of the major research and development issues for at least the next ten years."

Andrew Mill, NaREC chief executive, said: "We are finding ourselves at the centre of the race to the finishing line amongst the wind turbine manufacturers whose boundaries are moving all the time.

"Flexibility, confidentiality and the ability to share the pressures of the manufacturer's deadline are what our customers are looking for. Our quayside facility removes the logistical nightmares associated with moving blades over 50m in length."