Posters

Abstract

At the end of Merkel's chancellorship, the new German coalition parties are discussing different ways for Germany to play an active role in achieving the climate protection goals of Glasgow. Liberal forces argue that Germany should live up to its pioneering role by investing massively into renewable energy technology abroad. Green and Social Democratic forces emphasize the need for reducing energy consumption while expanding domestic renewables, primarily in southern Germany, as well as energy grids. A third way, capacity building (knowledge transfer) by training and retraining engineers already active worldwide for the field of wind energy, is little discussed in the political sphere. However, that third way has been pursued at the University of Kassel since 2015. Professors from the university, together with lecturers from the application-oriented Fraunhofer Institute and experts from the wind industry, teach working engineers worldwide. The flexible online study program "Wind Energy Systems" enables engineers worldwide to complete an advanced university education within 3.5 years alongside their full-time job, which enables them to advance the development of wind energy in their own country. For the wind power companies and employers of the students, the in-service training also has advantages, as their employees specialize in future topics of wind energy at master level, including predictive maintenance, digitalization of wind energy, towers, repowering, wind farm control &monitoring and energy storage, without reducing their weekly working hours.