After a hearty breakfast at the Wren Urban Nest Hotel, the CDT group met up with our colleagues at Trinity College to be shown around the various labs around their campus. It was interesting to see the different layout of some of the labs and equipment compared to our own in Sheffield, with respect to the layout and some of the equipment. Their clean room is not something that is too common, which was cool to learn about.

Additionally, there was a tour around some of their analytical equipment, with the Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEMs) being particularly interesting due to the rarity of some of the equipment (4 in the world at the time of writing!). These machines allow the user to see the atomic arrangements of materials which can be useful in understanding their structure and properties for more information about the TEM process, click here.

In the afternoon, the CDT cohort presented a group talk on the UK national grid, current energy storage and generation tactics and our perspective on some strategies that could be utilized by the UK, or adapted for the Irish electrical grid, moving forward into the future.

There was still enough time left in the day for a quick detour to sample some local culture, and how better to do so than with a whisky tasting session at the museum!

Finally, we attended the Energy Storage Ireland Conference welcome reception, meeting and networking with colleagues from across Ireland and the UK.