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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

Collaborative Research Based Education for Optimized Performance of Wind Farms

Alternative title: Samarbeid om forskningsbasert utdanning for optimert drift og vedlikehold av vindturbiner

Awarded: NOK 10.0 mill.

A spur in growth of renewable energy industry has resulted in an additional requirement of millions of educated/trained employees in this sector. Some Norwegian universities, like, HVL and NTNU have responded to the challenge by offering a number of programs in this domain; yet there is a need to improve further quantity and quality of these programs. A typical wind turbine is a Cyber Physical system (CPS) where components of the physical structure (blades, supporting structure, generator, etc.) seamlessly integrate with the cyber systems (sensors, network, software tools etc.). For optimised operation and maintenance, it is crucial to have a good understanding of both the cyber and physical aspects of the wind turbines. This requires extensive knowledge of diverse fields, such as structural engineering, mechanical engineering, electronics, instrumentation, telecommunication, and data analytics. Hence, there is a need to develop courses with the new knowledge of these areas in the context of wind turbines. In this project, we shall endeavour to develop a world-class academic environment within the field of Operation and Maintenance of Wind Turbines by strengthening education and research within Cyber-physical Systems. For this purpose universities and research centres of Norway (HVL, OsloMet, NTNU and SINTEF) shall work in close collaboration with those of U.S.A. (NASA Ames Research Centre, PARC and North Carolina A&T State University) and India (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur and Malaviya National Institute of Technology) to enhance research-based education. The project shall facilitate: a) sharing and developing curriculum and teaching material for new or already existing courses; b) short/long term student and staff mobility; c) organization of workshops, summer/research schools, guest lectures, micro-credential courses, conferences/seminars; and d) research cooperation and joint supervision of research projects.

Currently there is a worldwide shortage of millions of educated/trained employees in the Renewable energy (RE) sector. This shortage is primarily attributed to the large amount of time taken to adapt the educational curriculum as per industry needs. Some Norwegian colleges/universities (such NTNU, HVL) have actively responded to the aforementioned challenge by offering a number of programs in the RE domain, but still there is a need to improve both – quantity and quality – of these programs. In particular, education and training on Optimized Performance of Wind Farms (OPWF) is lacking behind in teaching state-of-the art research. In this project we shall utilize the research offerings, results and experience gained from an existing NFR funded project “HYDROMORE – Hydrodynamic Mooring Analysis for Ocean Renewable Energy”, currently running at W3 (Wind, Water and Waves) Research Group at HVL, to strengthen the quality of education, within the field of OPWF by employing emerging technologies (AR,VR etc.). We shall focus on UN's SDG 4.1 and 4.3 by exploring the contribution of technology for promoting quality education at Bachelors, Masters and PhD levels. Working together with educators and researchers from partnering institutes (from USA, India), we intend to develop methodologies for Accelerated Course Development (ACD), such that time duration for bringing results of new research into the educational curriculum is shortened. The project will help us to reinforce the strategic collaboration links with partners in order to develop world-class research based education in Norway within the area of OPWF. We shall facilitate: a) developing/sharing curriculum for new or already existing courses with focus on OPWF; b) short/long term student and staff/researcher mobility; c) organization of workshops, summer/research schools, seminars, conferences. micro-courses, MOOC and COIL; d) joint supervision and cooperation for future research projects.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research