Renewable Energy: Resources and Technologies

St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University via Coursera

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Details

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

5 weeks
Sessions

Finished
Subtitles

English

Found in

Overview

In our course, you will become familiar with the basic concepts of renewable energy. Get an idea about the basics of determining the potential of renewable energy resources, including its territorial, temporal and climatic variability.

We paid great attention to the study of modern technologies for converting solar, wind and hydropower, as well as to operating modes of power plants based on renewables in power supply systems for autonomous and grid consumers. Within the framework of the concept of sustainable development, analysis and quantitative comparison of the environmental impacts of organic, nuclear and renewable energy is carried out. The use of design, financial and economic management tools, taking into account the development of innovative technologies for creating renewable energy equipment, allows to optimize the parameters and increase the efficiency of projects.

The course contains a large number of practical tasks to consolidate the acquired knowledge and skills in the field of using renewable energy sources.

Syllabus

Current state and development trends of renewable energy sources in the world

In the twenty-first century, there are significant changes in the strategic principles of energetics development, including in terms of the formation of priority directions for its development. Modern energetics, based mainly on non-renewable energy resources, is a catalyst for energy crises and needs significant modernization.
The module is aimed at forming a system of knowledge among students in the field of the current state and development trends of the fuel and energy sector in the world and determining the prospects for the development of renewable energy sources.
Students will get acquainted with the classification of energy sources, the dynamics of renewable energy sources consumption in comparison with traditional energy sources, the volumes of production and consumption of electricity by the resources types, as well as an assessment of climate change and their impact on renewable energy resources.

Renewable energy resource assessment

The module is aimed at developing a system of knowledge among students about the basics of determining the potential of renewable energy resource, including its territorial, temporal and climatic variability.
Students will get acquainted with the classification of water resources, their distribution and use patterns.
The module provides the evaluation of the hydropower potential of a watercourse, considers the types and main parameters of hydropower plants.
The natural processes of the wind flows formation and their characteristics are analyzed, the main parameters of the wind power plant are determined.
The characteristics of solar radiation for energy use are considered and the factors influencing the change in solar radiation are estimated.

Renewable energy conversion technologies

The module is aimed at forming a system of knowledge among students about modern principles and technologies for converting renewable energy sources (RES), the features of the operating modes of RES power plants in the design and implementation of power supply systems for autonomous and grid consumers.
Students will get acquainted with the types of hydropower plants, the main parameters and methods of their determination, energy conversion schemes and equipment for hydro power plants.
In the module the types of wind power plants and their features are analyzed. Students will get acquainted with modern ideas about wind power plants and their functioning in the power grid, study the types and technologies of using solar energy, as well as methods of converting solar energy into heat and electricity.
This module discussed the functioning of the power grid and features of power plants on renewable energy in the energy system, as well as design features of renewable energy facilities.

Use of RES complexes for autonomous power supply

The module is aimed at forming a system of knowledge among students about the use of power plants based on renewable energy sources for autonomous power supply.
The prerequisites for the complex use of renewable energy sources and the creation of hybrid systems are analyzed.
Students will get acquainted with the principles of hybrid systems based on renewable energy sources operation, their classification and study the types of storage systems.
The module considers operation modes of renewables based hybrid systems (RHS) in autonomous generation, the principles of creating efficient RHS and the optimization of their operating modes.
Based on the calculation of the consumers load, the students will justify the choice of the location of the RHS, the type of wind turbine and the composition of the equipment, choose the best option using the efficiency criteria.

Economics and ecology of renewable energy sources

Given the understanding that the economic development of society should be environmentally friendly and energy independent, the module focuses on the environmental aspects of the use of renewable energy sources.
The modern principles of assessing the effectiveness of projects are considered in order to make management decisions on the creation and operation of power plants based on renewable energy sources. Examples of calculation of project efficiency indicators are presented.
Students will get acquainted with the concept of sustainable development and renewable energy sources. The module also assesses the impact of renewables based power plants on the environment.