Design limits and solutions for very large wind turbines

Results and conclusions
First, preliminary material (in the form of guidelines,
templates and so on) was developed, which helped to
design the UpWind course module for the identifi ed
target groups. Apart from the detailed literature analysis
and web-based survey, a questionnaire based survey
was also carried out. Information on wind energy
related training courses was collected from 43 course
providers.
An online database of all courses relevant to wind
energy found all over Europe was developed. This is
the “Database of EU courses in the fi eld of wind energy”,
and it includes all available details (level, contents,
duration, contacts, etc.) for the courses. The database
can be found on UpWind’s website 10 .
Another major achievement is the “Wind Energy Information
and Education Network – WEIEN (e-database)”. This
database is a restricted area within the RenKnow.net 11
website which has been created for the WEIEN members
with all relevant functionalities of the REnKnow.net
website.
The WEIEN is:
A database for up- and downloading documents;
A forum for discussion;
An “open source knowledge creation” tool (like an
internal “Wikipedia”);
A facilitator of the peer-review process for training
materials.
Work on WEIEN is continuous, as the database has
to be constantly updated. Also, the “resource guide
to course modules” was another important part of
this work, which includes the most essential of the
common components of the courses surveyed, as
well as the key characteristics of the modules that
need to be developed or updated in order to be integrated
into existing and new wind energy courses.
This way, the topics covered by a course that will lead
to a PhD decree were developed. It was decided that
the target groups of the UpWind training course(s)
should already have some basic knowledge of wind
energy technology. Therefore, the aim was not to
create training courses for basic studies, but to build
on the students’ previously acquired knowledge (as
shown in Figure 4).
Level 1
Habil.,
PhD,
…
Level 2
Concentrate on
technical
UpWind issues
UpWind
training
courses
Level 3
Fundamental wind energy training courses
at university level e.g.
wind resources, aerodynamics, Betz,
design, electric machines, grid integration,
economics, etc.
Figure 4 : UpWind training targets students of educational levels 2 (i.e. between the basic Levels of 1 and 3)
10
http://www.upwind.eu/Paginas/Publications/1A3%20Training%20and%20Education.aspx
11
http://renknownet.iset.uni-kassel.de
Design limits and solutions for very large wind turbines
33