Renewable energy engineering

Max amount of FITech students: 20 adult learners who are chosen based on a motivation letter

In order to decrease the CO2 emissions from energy, transport and buildings sectors, and especially emissions coming from the fossil fuel combustion, we need to increase the share of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. As an integral part, heat pumps will play an important role in future energy systems as they are used to produce heat with affordable renewable electricity, instead of using combustion heat as energy source.

This course gives a compact theory review on the wind and solar power plants and heat pumps for heating and cooling applications, their operation and design principles. In addition to this, we discuss the capacity requirements and critically evaluate the available sources, including material availability issues, land use and other environmental considerations for wind and solar power. We also discuss the challenges when implementing renewable energy into a traditional energy system.

Course contents

Wind power, solar power and heat pumps.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, the student is able to

• understand why we need renewable energy and heat pumps and what are the main challenges is this
• calculate annual power generation of wind and solar PV power plants and their capacity factors
• dimension a theoretical wind turbine blade and how to determine optimal operation point
• understand the main power control methods of wind and solar power plants and know the main wind generator types used
• know how to draw the U-I and U-P characterictics of solar PV panels, and determine the maximum power point
• know how to connect resistive load and a battery to a solar panel
• know how to determine the COP and power requirement of a compression-based one and two stage heat pumps
• know how to use ln(p)-h diagrams in analysing heat pumps
• know how to carry out economical feasibility analysis of wind and solar PV power plants
• know how to calculate NPV and LCoE and understant their differences.

Course material

Lecture slides and video lectures in MyCourses (Aalto university course platform), Excel workbooks and Matlab codes.

Teaching schedule

The course can be taken as a self-study course based on an own individual time schedule between 2.12.2024–21.2.2025.

Completion methods

Completing video lectures and home work calculations/ assignments.

Studying this course offers you also a chance to join a study circle and the opportunity for career coaching upon completion of the course.

Motivation letter for the application

Please include a brief (up to 1 page) motivational letter with your application, in which you explain your background, career plans, and how studying the Renewable energy engineering course will contribute to them. Also, describe how you will manage your time to complete the course, considering three credits correspond to an average workload of 81 hours. Decisions regarding the selection of students for the course will be made after the application deadline has passed.

More information in the Aalto University study guide.

You can get a digital badge after completing this course.

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