Distance learning in renewable energy: RE-OPEN network meeting at UASTW

The now fourth project meeting for the European university network RE-OPEN (REmote labOratories for Practical Experiments on renewable energies at EU uNiversities), took place at UAS Technikum Wien from 24-25 October 2022. After the first face-to-face meeting in Rome in May, this was the second face-to-face workshop of the Erasmus+ co-funded project.

On the occasion of the meeting in Vienna, the progress in the establishment of each distance lab and the respective project activities were evaluated. Each university also presented a topic from the ongoing operation of their remote laboratory: “Photovoltaic U-I characteristic of different modules” was the contribution of UASTW, “Identification of a fan and plate system” is the focus of the team of Munster Technological University from Ireland; “CO2 heat pump with a heated room” and “Rankine cycle” are the main topics at Norwegian University of Science and Technology from Norway, “Charging and discharging UC” is the topic of Guglielmo Marconi University from Italy, and a “Supercapacitor power bank” is the topic of the University of Huelva in Spain.

The RE-OPEN Moodle platform, through which the distance labs are run, was also presented. After the meeting, the project participants visited the renewable energy laboratories at the Technical Center.

Among the next planned activities, besides the preparation of a validation report, the main one is the testing of the RE-OPEN Moodle platform. This will allow students to access the experiments of the other universities and share the results with their colleagues on a national and international level.

The RE-OPEN project will run for two years (2021-2023) and consists of a consortium of five EU universities offering innovative study programs in the field of renewable energy and the ICT company VJ Technology. The project aims to develop new solutions and concepts for distance learning in the field of renewable energies.