Profile

I live in Cork City and I’m originally from Co.Mayo. I live with some friends and I fly to Edinburgh once a month to visit my girlfriend. I play soccer, cycle and like going to the gym to keep fit and I will be taking part in the Westport Sea to Summit in November. Physical and Mental Strength are important to me! I also like to watch Netflix and I’m looking forward to the New Rick and Morty, Rick is a scientist with a few twists!

When I finished college in GMIT in 2009, I had a Mechanical Engineering degree from GMIT in Galway, unfortunately, 2009 was a global recession so I was unsuccessful in getting a job in Ireland or indeed Europe. After 6 months of applying for jobs while working in a petrol station with my new degree, I decided to go to Melbourne, Australia in the hope of finding a job.

I got a job in Melbourne after 2 months with a company called Environmental Automation (EA). EA are a controls company, they install building management systems (BMS) which controls lights & air-conditioning. The BMS can monitor fire alarms, security, water storage and much more. The idea of a BMS is the building manager can easily control and monitor a large building while sitting in front of a BMS interface, which is just a computer. The goal for our BMS project was to reduce the building energy consumption, which reduces bills and there are less GHG emissions, its a win for everyone! In EA I worked in all departments, I worked in programming the controllers, designing graphics for the BMS, commissioning the new controllers to ensure they work correctly. I also worked in service and maintenance, where I checked existing controls and fixed or adjusted them as required. One time I was working in a corner office on the 50th floor of a building, the guy complained it was cold. The office had windows (with no blinds) from floor to ceiling so that he could look at the marvellous views. Unfortunately, that office doesn’t get sun until the afternoon. The guy whose office it was said he was getting icicles on his nose, our thermostat was saying it was 19degC in that room, one thing I know is science doesn’t lie, people sometimes do!

One interesting project I worked on was a complicated cinema air-conditioning project, where the cinema ticketing software talked with the air conditioning system and we only turned on the air conditioning in that cinema when there was a movie AND at least one ticket sold. Then depending on the amount of tickets sold, we could adjust the room temperature setpoint, we also looked at the CO2 levels in the cinema and we could add fresh air as required. The higher the CO2 levels the more drowsy people are, you may know some classrooms in your schools which make you drowsy – could be the teacher, could be the CO2 levels!

After 8 years in Melbourne, I returned to Ireland and did a masters in Sustainable Energy in Cork. I learned about wind energy, biomass energy, solar energy, electrical power systems and energy system modelling. It was energy system modelling which I enjoyed so I decided I would continue to study energy system modelling. My PhD study is aiming to find sustainable future pathways for Ireland. To do this a lot of data is needed such as current and future price of oil, gas and coal. The efficiency of the different power stations and technologies available now and expected future efficiencies and limits. (eg. wind turbines cant be built everywhere on Ireland there is a technical and social limit ) when we combine all the data we need to set limits and have a good understanding of Ireland’s energy system and Irelands energy users. I also look at human behaviour, I think of questions like – why don’t people insulate their houses? Why are houses soo big compared to previous generations? How come solar panels aren’t everywhere? Why dont we use nuclear energy? Why cant we grow more biomass? the list goes on…I think of new questions every day and with no real answers, but lots of theories