The aim of this lecture course (6 ECTS) is that students understand the physical principles of wind energy and the technology of modern wind energy systems. It consists of lectures and exercises, and is given by Prof. Dr. Moritz Diehl and Nick Harder.

Contents: 

• global wind energy resource
• aerodynamic principles of wind turbines
• design of modern wind turbines
• control of modern wind turbines
• the electrical system of wind turbines
• alternative concepts and airborne wind energy

Course Organization

The course is organized as flipped classroom. We provide recordings of the lectures and will meet once every week for either a Q&A or an exercise session. The detailed time plan for the semester can be found below. We highly recommend to follow the suggesed schedule for the lectures.

Virtual meetings: We will meet every Tuesday, 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM, in a virtual lecture room. These meetings are alternatingly dedicated to either Q&A sessions with Prof. Diehl or exercise sessions with the teaching assistant (see below). We will use Zoom for the meetings. Please note that you can join the meeting via your browser and do not need to install to the Zoom client. 

You can join via this link. 

Meeting ID: 629 0189 7053

Password: efjnDNpG3

None of the meetings will be recorded. For more information on how the university uses Zoom, a guide for students, and a note on data protection please see here.

Lecture recordings: The lecture recordings were already created in a past semester.

Course manuscript: The lectures are accompanied by a detailed course manuscript, which you may find here.

Q&A sessions: Every second week there will be a virtual Q&A session with Prof. Diehl, where you can ask any questions about the course content. The format is meant to be highly interactive and depends strongly on your participation. We would recommend that while watching the video lectures or reading the course script, you write down any questions that come to your mind, such that you have them readily available for the Q&A sessions.

Exercises: The exercises are voluntary (though of course we strongly recommend to solve them). Nonetheless we offer the possibility to hand them in to receive feedback, but for this please respect the deadlines you can find in the calendar below. If you would like feedback on a specific part of the exercise especially, you can state so on your solution sheet. To hand them in, send them in an email to: nick.harder@inatech.uni-freiburg.de.

Exercise sessions: Every other week we will meet for the exercise sessions. They will not be used to show the solutions, but to discuss any questions related to the exercises. These can either be questions about the current exercise sheet or questions about the solution to the last sheet. As the Q&A sessions, this format depends heavily on your participance.

Final evaluation: The final exam is a written exam. This final exam is 'closed-book,' which means that ONLY pens, a calculator, and one A4 page (that is, two sides) of notes can be used. The questions will be partially multiple-choice and partially short-answer.

Schedule

Special Events

• The tour to the wind turbines on Rosskopf will take place on Juny 11 afternoon. All information TBA.

Resources

Wind Energy Handbook is available here.

Wind Energy Explained: Theory, Design and Application is available here.

Links of interest

2020-05-12 Report on renewable power generation costs in 2018 (by IRENA) (PDF)

2020-05-19 Which way a wind turbine turns might not seem to matter (by the Economist) (screenshot)

2020-05-19 Atmospheric circulation patterns (from wikipedia)

2020-05-26 Article on the Global Energy Transition (by the Economist)

2020-06-02 Albert Betz: Wind-Energie. Cover, Turbine Illustrations, Concluding Sentence