RENEWABLE ENERGY

Presentation

The 6 CFU course provides a quantitative yet accessible overview of renewable energy engineering technologies and practices transforming energy supply systems over the coming years. The program gains insights into the primary energy resources, i.e., wind, hydro, solar thermal, photovoltaic, ocean, bioenergy, and geothermic. It teaches the students to hybridize their skills and knowledge over various fields of physics and technologies. 

The course will describe the technologies involved, background theory, and how projects are developed, constructed, and operated. The program will engage the students with examples, presentations, and discussions of real test projects: the students will learn to calculate the output of renewable energy schemes and construct a business model for long-term value. The program will devote particular attention to renewable energy plants' permitting processes and the problematic environmental aspects.  Finally, during the program, several tutorials will present commercial software widely used in the field.

The course will support students from a range of disciplines and will ensure they receive the broad understanding essential for a successful career in the field.

Program

The course's main objective is to provide students with the foundations for identifying and defining alternative and renewable energy solutions for a given case study from an environmental, energy, and economic point of view. The primary knowledge acquired will be:

• Basic knowledge of alternative energy resources.

• Knowledge of the state of reserves and energy consumption.

• Fundamentals of problems related to the use of different forms of energy.

• Knowledge related to the leading solutions for energy saving and the increase of energy efficiency in civil and industrial environments

• Basic knowledge of regulatory aspects and existing incentives in the field of energy production and energy saving

The primary skills to be acquired will be:

• Identify the suitable energy solution for an application case, considering the technical, economic, and environmental aspects.

• Identify suitable solutions for energy saving in various fields.

• Know how to define energy planning and choose the most suitable energy sources for the case study.

• Know how to evaluate the environmental problems of traditional and renewable energy plants.

The course will explain the following:

1. Energy in the modern world

2. The solar energy resource

3. Wind energy

4. Hydropower

5. Solar thermal systems

6. Photovoltaic systems

7. Marine energy

8. Bioenergy

9. Geothermal energy

10. Development and appraisal of renewable energy projects 

11. Electrical energy systems

Textbooks

Nicholas Jenkins, Janaka Ekanayake, Renewable Energy Engineering, Cambridge University Press

Mehmet Kanoglu, Yunus A. Cengel, John M. Cimbala, Fundamentals and Applications of Renewable Energy, McGraw Hill

John Twidell, Tony Weir, Renewable Energy Resources, Routledge

Exam

The exam consists of three exercises to be carried out in an hour and a half. Subsequently, there is an oral exam on the whole program. The final mark is the average between the written test and the oral test.

The exam collection can be downloaded here in zip format.