Renewable Energy Systems

Overview:

Introduction

To reduce the environmental impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, and to aid sustainable development, there is a need to support low carbon technologies, especially from renewable sources. The ocean is a vast and largely untapped energy resource, which can potentially supply the global electricity demand. Therefore, an emerging eld of the marine renewable energy industry has initiated, and such expertise is increasingly on-demand. Recently, a coordinated strategy for developing inter- Disciplinary ocean renewable energy program at URI has been formed to promote research and education in this area (Ocean Renewable Energy Cluster). This course can serve as a stepping stone for graduate/undergraduate students from various disciplines, who are interested in the technical and environmental aspects of ocean renewable energy. It applies knowledge they have learned across multiple courses in an exciting new area.

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course, the participants will be able to:

• Understand the importance and roles of renewable energy in this modern age
• Learn how to maximize the natural resources and convert them into renewable energy
• Understand the components architecture between the solar and wind power generations
• Create awareness in understanding the types of renewable energy
• Appreciation of the benefits of harvesting renewable energy
• Understand the characteristics and operations of each type of renewable energy
• Explore the suitability of introducing renewable energy generation to your premises  

Targeted Audience:

• Electrical Engineers
• Maintenance Technicians
• Management Professionals
• Project Engineers
• Transmission Engineers
• Power Generation Engineers  

Course Outlines:

Unit 1:

• World energy scenario and place of renewable for energy generation
• Review of renewable energy technologies
• Place of PV in the context of the world and its importance.

Unit 2: Wind Energy:

• Classification of wind turbines
• Types of rotors
• Energy extraction from wind
• Wind power systems

Unit 3: Fundamentals of Semiconductors:

• Semiconductors as materials for solar cells
• Carrier concentration and distribution
• Generation-recombination processes
• Continuity Equations
• PN diodes: introduction to solar cells

Unit 4: Design of Solar Cells:

• Upper limits of cell parameters
• Losses in solar cells
• Design of parameters for a high-efficiency solar cell

Unit 5: Heterojunction, Thin Films, and Other Promising Solar Cells:

• GaAs-based tandem cells
• Amorphous Si-based thin films
• CIGS and CdTe based cells
• Emerging cells