COMMUNITY BUILDING AND CROSS-BORDER COLLABORATION THROUGH ONLINE COURSES IN WIND ENERGY

A new online course in wind energy has been developed by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) as part of the EU-funded project Virtual Campus Hub (FP7 RI-283746, www.virtualcampushub.eu). The course builds upon a successful physical course, which has been offered to the wind energy industry for more than 20 years. The course objectives are: 1. To teach participants to use the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) - the wind power industry-standard PC-software for wind resource assessment and siting of wind turbines and wind farms, with more than 4,000 licenses sold in more than 100 countries. 2. To provide participants with enough theory about wind power meteorology to avoid the major pitfalls in wind resource assessment. This paper describes the design and implementation of the online course in WAsP and the most important learning points gained from two test runs of the course. The course is then placed in the larger context of project Virtual Campus Hub where participants from four technical universities in Europe collaborate in a virtual framework utilizing state-of-the-art European E-infrastructure.