1.1. Elaborating lab equipment at UNESCO Chair

The mission of the UNESCO Chair “Renewable energy and electrification of agriculture” is to help people to use renewable energy and environmental building technologies through education. The UNESCO Chair teaches students (who visits VIESH for practical work from universities),

postgraduate students, teachers to understand fundamentals and basic principles of solar engineering, GIS, how to design, install and maintain solar energy systems, and how to design and build efficient, sustainable homes. The UNESCO Chair offers training and retraining to different level specialists of adjacent specializations from around the world.

A number of lab kits were developed at the UNESCO Chair: for studying: parameters and characteristics of solar cells (Fig. 1), ray tracing in models of different concentrators (Fig. 2), operational principle and characteristics of solar module with demonstration load (Fig. 3), characteristics of model solar hydrogen-storage system with reversible fuel cell (Fig. 4), simulating of Sun’s path on the sky and shading of solar systems on models [1] (Fig. 5), characteristics of solar air thermal collector with different absorbing elements and glazing (Fig. 6, left), which includes PV/T receiver (Fig. 6, right).

The systematic development of lab equipment for teaching solar energy and scientific research skills has started at the Chair from 2004 [2, 3]. One of the main tasks of the Chair is integrating educational and research activity of students during the practical work with lab equipment and preparing a research project. VIESH has quite busy test field at the roof on a building which is very suitable for research and teaching activity. Unfortunately sometimes bad or just not sunny weather does allow carrying out proper experiments outdoors in framework of students’ time schedule.

To avoid the dependence on weather described lab equipment was created during last several years. Lab equipment demonstrates principles behind solar energy technologies and is very suitable for using at universities, colleges, technical schools, and secondary schools. The equipment is useful for understanding solar energy, non-traditional and renewable energy, and also some aspects of physics, solid state physics and semiconductors, applied optics.

Fig..6. Lab set for study of solar thermal collector (left), PV/T receiving element of hybrid collector module (right)

Also a special satellite receiver and software was elaborated for demonstrating how GIS systems can be used for solar engineering projects and for study at sciences’ lessons. Lab equipment «Receiving and processing of satellite images of the Earth in real time operation mode» is a new stage of using modern technology. Complex consists of satellite antenna, receiver of satellite signal, software of processing aerospace image of the Earth (Fig.7). Software of the receiving complex «Kosmos — M2» is able to determine the temperature of underlying surface at any point of the image obtained; to measure distance from one point to another with regards the Earth’s geometry; to determine surface area; selection of map layer and so on, to have real time images within interval 2-4 hours. With help of this complex it is possible to study climatic aspects of solar energy.

Fig.7. Satellite receiver of space images of the Earth Satellite with antenna at the VIESH roof

More than 200 students and pupils during the last three years visit our lab for excursion and for practical works and have understood the main principles of solar energy conversion (Fig.8).