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Dr. Paul Leahy

Biography

Paul Leahy is lecturer in Wind Energy at University College Cork and a Funded Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland MAREI Centre for Marine, Climate and Energy research.

He has published over 35 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and is a Principal Investigator on several research projects including Re-Wind. Re-Wind is a transdisciplinary circular economy project aiming to generate sustainable repurposed products from decommissioned composite material wind turbine blades. Re-Wind is a tripartite project jointly funded by Science Foundation Ireland, National Science Foundation of the United States and the Department for the Economy of Northern Ireland, with a total UCC budget of €320,000. Dr Leahy currently co-supervises six PhD students working on topics in renewable energy, circular economy and climate change, and has examined over 20 PhD theses for various universities in Ireland, the UK and New Zealand.

Research Interests

His research interests include: wind energy; energy storage; impacts of climate change; and greenhouse gas emissions measurement and modelling.

Publications

Selected Publications

• Kelly, J. and Leahy, P. G. ‘Sizing Battery Energy Storage Systems: Using Multi-Objective Optimisation to Overcome the Investment Scale Problem of Annual Worth’. Published online at IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy doi: 10.1109/TSTE.2019.2954673
• O'Kelly Lynch, P.; Gallagher, P.; Borthwick, A.; McKeogh, E.; Leahy, P. (2019) 'Offshore Conversion of Wind Power to Gaseous Fuels: Feasibility Study in a Depleted Gas Field' Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A: Journal of Power and Energy doi: 10.1177/0957650919851001
• Mc Garrigle EV and Leahy, P G (2015) “Cost savings from relaxation of operational constraints on a power system with high wind penetration” IEEE Transactions On Sustainable Energy, Vol. 6 (3), pp. 881-888
• McGarrigle E V and Leahy P G (2015) 'Quantifying the value of improved wind energy forecasts in a pool-based electricity market'. Renewable Energy, 80 (8):517-524.
• Foley A. M., Leahy P. G., Marvuglia A. and McKeogh E. J. (2012), ‘Current Methods and Advances in Forecasting of Wind Power Generation’ Renewable Energy 37 (1), pp. 1-8 doi: 2010.1016/j.renene.2011.05.033

 

Full details of publications available at:

http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/D012/paulleahy

Professional Activity

Dr Leahy has acted as national expert reviewer for the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN, 2010) and the Second Order Draft of the Special Report SR1.5 on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (2018), and is Associate Editor of the journal Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews. Dr Leahy has also been appointed an expert reviewer for the ULYSSES Ireland-France programme of the Irish Research Council in 2018 and 2019. Dr Leahy delivered an keynote address at the 8th International Conference on Power Science and Engineering, held in Dublin in 2019, entitled “How sustainable are the technologies of the energy transition?”

Teaching Activity

Dr Leahy co-ordinates the following modules: 

CE6040            Civil Engineering Systems

NE4020            Energy Engineering Project

NE6003            Wind Energy Engineering

NE6010            Offshore Wind Energy

Dr Leahy contributes lectures to the following modules: 

NE2006            Primary Energy Engineering