Embedding Renewable Energy and Sustainability into the Engineering Technology Curricula

Abstract Embedding Renewable Energy and Sustainability into the Engineering Technology CurriculaThe world demand for electrical power is increasing and conventional energy resources are fastdepleting, making the renewable energy based electricity the only alternative. The renewableenergy industry is growing rapidly with both the global solar and wind industries seeing >40%growth per annum over the last five years. Furthermore, the market for fuel cells for standbypower is also starting to grow. Carbon tax, pollution reduction, and emissions trading legislationare paving the way for environmental accountability and sustainability in the industries. In thelast decades there have been significant advances in the renewable energy technologies, energyefficiency and sustainability, hence, the demand for trained engineers and technicians in theseareas increased. To maintain current living standards in developed countries and increase thequality of life in developing countries, sustainability needs to be at the core of all engineeringactivities. This requires the development of innovative curricula, new courses and laboratories toeducate students to work in this rapidly developing industry. Teaching sustainability andalternative energy on today engineering curriculum has ever more become an essential feature.However, the pace of change in education curriculums is growing exponentially due to numerouslegislative changes, financial or administrative constraints. Engineering education is must becharged with an environmental agenda due to response to wider changes in the society.Educators are regularly modifying curriculum content to embrace technological changes inlearning outcomes. The renewable energy and sustainability are highly interdisciplinary, crossingover between a numbers of research areas, making quite difficult to be covered in a singlecourse. However, the renewable energy and sustainability technologies have strong potential forhands-on multi-disciplinary project-based learning. A natural and efficient way of teaching andembedding renewable energy and sustainability into curriculum is the problem-oriented andproject-based learning approach. We are discussing, in this paper a series of such projects,included into our senior project design, power electronics and renewable energy courses.The structure of these projects, outcomes and observations, lessons learned and futureimprovements are discussed in details. Design and development of renewable energy andsustainability projects allow students to work on projects that can be relevant to current leadingedge research and technology. This paper also presents the development of an alternativeenergy technology course as part of this effort to include renewable energy andsustainability in our curriculum. The motivation for the course is outlined and a detaileddescription of the topics covered in the course, the course outcomes and course laboratoryexperiments are also given and detailed. The course and the projects are also part of the efforts ofto establish a renewable energy and sustainability program at our university. The usefulness ofthis approach will be evaluated and feedback from other educators will be highly appreciated.