16 Feb 2021
From Trains to Renewables!
BEng Aeronautical Engineering student, Nick Faulkner completed a ‘Year in Enterprise’ in 2020, setting up his own start-up company in the Rail Industry.
Nick says “It all started one day when my train was delayed. I thought that I must be entitled to some sort of compensation. It turned out I was but applying for it was made so difficult; countless forms and weeks of waiting. I thought, "I can’t be the only one who is finding this process tedious." After some research, I came across the statistic that over £100m of compensation is unclaimed by delayed train passengers; some don’t realise they’re entitled to it, whilst others are just put off by the process. This needed to change.”
Across the year Nick designed and built a new mobile app to help passengers in the UK claim back their money quickly using only a photo of their ticket, cutting the need for endless form filling.
This experience developed his software skills in a variety of programming languages and cloud computing, skills which were put to the test when he became involved in a rapidly growing start-up, Cognitive Business, specialists in applied A.I. for the renewable energy space.
During his time there Nick developed the front-end prototype for WAVES, a new deep-learning platform that supports offshore wind operators forecast of when turbines will be accessible for maintenance, increasing the safety of off-shore maintenance crews and reducing costs. Since its creation WAVES has gone on to be recognised by the current Minister for Energy and is in operation with one of the largest offshore wind operators globally, RWE.
Nick has partnered with Cognitive Business again for his final year project, which focuses on increasing the revenues of wind farms using AI for energy-yield optimisation. Based on what Nick has already achieved, we look forward to what he does next and we wish him all the very best for his final year project!
If you have an interest in any of the projects Nick has been working on, please see the links below:
