Joseph Devlin, a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), has won the 2015 all-Ireland student energy research pitching competition, run by the UCD IEEE Power and Energy Society Student Chapter, and hosted by ESB International. Devlin, who is conducting his PhD at the Energy, Power and Intelligent Control research group at QUB, will now go on to represent the energy sector at the Thesis in Three finals in Dublin. His research “Gas Generation Dispatch Optimisation Considering Wind Forecast Error”, was titled “The Two Most Important Gases in Ireland” for the competition, looks at the impact of wind generation on gas-fired generation in Ireland. He won the judges’ prize from a field of nine other candidates from UCD, UCC, QUB and ESB International. The competitors had to give a pitch of their research using only three slides in just three minutes, and were judged on the criteria of context, clarity and charisma. The expert judging panel consisted of Richard Crowley (EirGrid), Carol Murphy (ESB International) and Dr Lisa Ryan (UCD Energy Institute). “The standard of the competition was very high, and we had a very difficult decision trying to award an overall winner,” said panel judge, Dr Lisa Ryan of UCD Energy Institute. The pitches covered a range of topics including smart building data management, intelligent power electronic transformers, market analysis, energy systems integration, power system reserve, and reactive power control of wind farms. Jonathan Ruddy, PhD student at the UCD Energy Institute, won the audience choice prize. Ruddy’s presentation was on low frequency AC transmission for offshore wind farms. He used the analogy of how the speed of shaking a bottle of Coca-Cola is related to resulting level of fizz, as way to demonstrate the relationship between frequency and reactive power.