Renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy and hydropower are the basis for a sustainable energy supply. They are also becoming the most economical option. Accordingly, the importance of renewable energies is growing in Germany and worldwide.

In order to be professionally active in this field or to develop new innovations in the field of research and development, the individual energy systems as well as their interaction with other producers, consumers and storage systems in different electrical network structures must be well understood.

In the "Regenerative Energy Systems" laboratory, students should develop and bring to life this multi-layered understanding of renewable energy systems through numerous practical experiments. The aim is to develop expertise, skills and methods in the following areas:

• Technologies for the conversion of renewable energies into electrical energies within photovoltaic systems, wind energy plants or hydropower plants, and in particular the handling of fluctuations in the energy supply
• Fundamentals of storage technologies (batteries, fuel cells)
• Integration of regenerative energy systems in stand-alone networks/microgrids and power grids, and behaviour in the event of a fault
• Design and planning of individual regenerative energy systems or their combination in microgrids on the basis of appropriate software
• Control, regulation and optimization of individual energy systems and microgrids using appropriate automation hardware and algorithms

The laboratory in room B 138 is equipped with modern hardware, software and teaching systems on the following topics:

• Photovoltaics (solar modules of different technologies, photovoltaic systems in grid parallel and island operation)
• wind energy (operating behavior of double-fed asynchronous generators, behavior in the event of a fault)
• storage technologies (batteries, fuel cells)
• Energy system simulation (PVsyst, QBlade, Meteonorm, HOMER, MATLAB/Simulink) on 6 PCs and one workstation
• Energy management and monitoring in hybrid systems and microgrids (such as Beckhoff training system, Labview)

These topic-specific systems are complemented by modern and universally applicable laboratory equipment such as oscilloscope, electronic load, function generators, NI data acquisition, etc.

Through teaching and research cooperations within the university, further teaching and research systems are available on the following topics:

• Grid integration of regenerative energy systems (in cooperation with the "Electric Energy Systems" laboratory)Solar module production and PV system technology (in cooperation with the "PV System Technology" laboratory)
• Solar module production and PV system technology (in cooperation with the "PV System Technology" laboratory)
• hydropower with Pelton and Francis turbines (from spring 2016, in cooperation with the laboratory "Maschinenlabor")
• Microgrids with solar energy, small wind power, battery system and block-type thermal power station and corresponding automation technology: the „Energieinsel“ of the Research Group Intelligent Energy Networks (IEN)
• Smart grid with solar energy, small wind power, battery system, electrolyser and fuel cell, electric mobility and automation technology: the Smart Grid at the Institute of Sustainable Energy Systems

If you are interested in project work or final theses in the field of renewable energy systems, please take a look at the Intelligent Energy Systems research group.