Student Learning Experience from Renewable Energy Case Studies

Students’ design projects at all levels are increasingly focused on the renewable energy sources and systems due to the increased emphasis in the U.S. on clean energy innovation, generation, manufacturing, and commercialization. Since many topics and issues related to the renewable energy systems have been investigated by well-equipped research teams all over the world, the educational effort for student learning should be focused on how students acquire useful knowledge in the physical and chemical principles and make meaningful contributions to the applications of renewable energy. This paper describes four completed “green energy” projects. The description includes a summary of the project requirements, design processes, and laboratory work. It also describes the interactions between faculty, staff, and students from different disciplines. A special emphasis is placed on understanding how to make interdisciplinary projects successful. During the past several years, our senior design capstone course teams have designed case studies such as wind energy turbines, fuel cell controllers, solar cell maximum power tracking controllers, and other similar projects. The paper also explores the students’ motivation for undertaking an interdisciplinary project and looks at how they were able to remain motivated. Initial results show that students’ motivation remained high as long as the project remained challenging. In addition, the interdisciplinary subject matter, laboratory techniques, and interactions between students, staff, and sponsors all played a role in the project success. Finally, the paper explores how participation in these interdisciplinary projects influenced students in their subsequent career choices.