Embedding renewable energy and sustainability into the engineering technology curricula

Abstract

The world demand for electricity is increasing and conventional energy resources are fast depleting, making the renewable energy based electricity the only alternative. Today the renewable energy is one of the most rapidly growing rapidly industry. Carbon tax, pollution reduction, and emissions trading legislation are paving the way for environmental accountability and sustainability in the industries. In the last decades there have also been not only significant advances in the renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency and sustainability, but also an increased demand for trained engineers and technicians in these areas. To maintain current living standards in developed countries and increase the quality of life in developing countries, sustainability and energy efficiency need to be at the core of all engineering activities. This requires the development of innovative curricula, new courses and laboratories to educate students to work in these rapidly developing industries. Teaching sustainability and alternative energy on today engineering curriculum has increasingly become an essential feature. Engineering education moves into the twenty first century charged with an environmental agenda to respond to wider changes in the society. However, the educators are regularly modifying curriculum content to embrace technological changes into the learning outcomes. In the modern world where everything changes at an extremely fast pace, keeping up to date with technology is not only desirable but necessary. On the other hand, the renewable energy and sustainability are highly interdisciplinary, crossing over between a numbers of research areas, making quite difficult to be covered in a single course. However, the renewable energy (RE) and sustainability field have strong potential for hands-on multi-disciplinary project-based learning. Renewable energy projects can easily involve electrical, mechanical, computer, civil, and chemical engineering aspects while still being accessible to undergraduate students. A natural and efficient way of teaching and embedding renewable energy and sustainability into engineering and engineering technology curricula is the problem-oriented and project-based learning approach. In this paper, we are discussing a series of RE projects, included into our senior project design, power electronics and renewable energy courses. The project structure and outcomes, lesson learned and future improvements are discussed in details. Design and development of renewable energy and sustainability projects allow students to work on projects that can be relevant to current leading edge research and technology. The development, content and structure of an alternative energy course as part of this effort to embed renewable energy into our curriculum are also presented. The motivation for the course is outlined and a detailed description of the topics covered in the course is also given. The course and the projects are also part of the efforts of to establish a renewable energy and sustainability program at our university. The usefulness of this approach will be evaluated and feedback from other educators will be highly appreciated. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.