About Me
Mehmet Serkan YILDIRIM is a business-oriented technical professional holding degree in Mechanical Engineering (MSc) from Yildiz Technical University (www.ytu.edu.tr) Istanbul, Turkey and Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Handelshøyskolen BI (www.bi.no) Oslo, Norway. Serkan has several years of working experience in the power generation industry particularly working forefront within the field of turbomachinery equipment such as state of the art gas turbines. Serkan's keen interest in energy topics began during his master of science study on mechanical engineering by the formation of GESK, a student organization dedicated to develop prototype vehicles powered by renewable energy sources such as Solar PV and Hydrogen.
Serkan's career started at TUBITAK - UME (National Research Council of Turkey - National Metrology Institute ) in 2004. Serkan was a research scientest and was working on the development of high precision flow and torque measurement devices to the industry and metrology world.
During Serkan's leadership term, GESK Team developed several prototype vehicles powered by solar PV and hydrogen fuel cell and those vehicles called Barracuda and Hyd-R respectively. The first version of the Barracuda has been racing already in summer of 2006,
Summer 2007 GESK Team - Hyd-R (left) and Barracuda (Right)
The first Hydrogen powered vehicle Hyd-R was completed in 2007. Both vehicles have gained significant public interest they have been showcased in Istanbul streets where Hyd-R became the first Hydrogen powered vehicle ever driven in Turkish roads in 2008. An advanced version of Hydrogen power vehicle produced and called Hyd-RX after the successful history of predecessor and competed in Shell Eco-Marathon in 2008
Summer 2008 Hyd-RX at Shell Eco Marathon in France
KG2-3E Gas Turbine
Later in July 2009, Serkan moved to Norway and join the development of a new gas turbine project in Kongsberg, Norway. Kongsberg has been center of excellence for the gas turbines in Norway. KG2 gas turbine has been developed in the 1960s and fist gas turbine installed in the island of Røst in Lofoten, Norway in 1968 to provide stand-by electricity during frequent outages caused by damages created by the storm. The development project Serkan was joined was aiming to develop the newer generation of the legendary KG2 gas turbine and the new gas turbine has been named KG2-3G after its predecessor KG2-3E.
KG2-3E Gas Turbine
Since the start of the development project, Serkan has been working on several sections of the gas turbine development program contributed the successful launch of two different versions of the newer KG2 gas turbine to power generation world. In 2015, Serkan was appointed as Product Manager to support commercialization and industrialization of the new gas turbine. Serkan has developed a long-range product plan based on market developments and customer demand as well as managed R&D projects according to internal procedures. The most recent responsibilities and Serkan's MBA study which was specialized to Energy Industry brought Serkan to focus to the other power generation technologies such as renewable energy, energy storage systems and alternative fuels.
