With delegates attending from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, the 10 th All Electric Ship Conference (AES 2007) organised by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) and supported by Société de l’Electricité, de l’Electronique, et des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (SEE) proved to be highly successful.
“The value of the 10 th AES 2007 conference to both the commercial and military communities was shown by the high quality of the 45 papers and three keynote addresses,” said Paul Norton FIMarEST, the Chief Marine Engineering Electrical in the Defence Equipment and Support organisation of the UK Ministry of Defence and AES 2007 Conference Chair: “The papers covered experience from operations, new designs and developments to other relevant technical areas of electrification and new technology. Sponsorship from the US Office of Naval Research and the commercial AES system supplier, Converteam, added to the wide appeal of the conference. Attendance by some 200 delegates at the conference in London provided an excellent forum for discussions and the sharing of the experience and aspirations for the fast developing All Electric Ship technology arena.”
Keynote addresses were delivered by Rear Admiral Kevin M McCoy of the US Navy; Stephen Payne OBE from Carnival Corporate Shipbuilding; and Captain Jim Syring of the US Navy; and packed sessions looked at Naval AES; AES Design and Simulation; Auxiliary Systems; AES System Analysis; the Submarines and AC-DC Debate; AES Operational Support; Advanced Technology; and AES Lifecycle. A searchable CD of the proceedings of AES 2007 is now available from IMarEST Publications at £80 by contacting lorraine.jordan [at] imarest [dot] org.
David Mattick OBE, who manages the Electric Ship Technology Demonstrator for Converteam explains: "AES 2007 was intended to track the transition from concept to reality in marine electrical power, propulsion and utilisation over the past decade which it did extremely well. However, it achieved much, much more than this including excellent networking and social opportunities as well as strong indications of some of the development paths being actively pursued to meet future reliability and power density requirements. Also, and for the first time at AES, there was significant submarine input to the activities."
Professor Chris Hodge FREng, BMT Defence Services Ltd was tasked with delivering the closing summary of the two packed days. "AES 2007 continued the excellent standards of the IMarEST's highly successful series of conferences on the All Electric Ship,” he explains. “Delegates from 16 countries enjoyed debating the issues surrounding the electrification of marine engineering over two days in London. Particular highlights were reports on the successful sea-trials of the United Kingdom's Electric Type 45 Destroyer and the progress of the USA DDG 1000 programme."
"Good technical debate, good surroundings and good networking made AES 2007 an outstanding conference," he added.
Traditionally AES is held alternatively in France and the UK. “We look forward to the return of AES to the UK when the twelfth event in the series is staged,” says Keith Read CBE, Chief Executive of IMarEST. “This year’s event was highly successful and the Institute would like to thank all involved in putting together such a fascinating and topical programme. With its theme ‘Vision Redrawn – Recording the experience, recognising the ambition, refining the balance’ the conference provided a superb and timely opportunity for those involved in the research, design, building, testing, operating and support phases of commercial and warships’ life to discuss the exciting opportunities offered by the All Electric Ship.
Information on IMarEST, its work on behalf of members and its forthcoming events programme is available at www.imarest.org
