Development of a mobile wind laboratory for teaching purposes in emerging countries

High quality education in the field of renewable energies is uncommon in some emerging and most developing countries. Reasons for this are, on the one hand lack of a qualified academic body in the field, and on the other hand the fact that, local education opportunities in these fields, when existent, are reserved for what we chose to refer as “elite minorities”. Given the relative scarcity of didactic means in the area of renewable energies in developing countries, alternatives need to be found in order to achieve high quality knowledge transfer at reasonable costs. In this contribution, an alternative to conventional teaching models, consisting of a transportable wind laboratory will be introduced. The wind laboratory, sophisticated at first sight, yet actually intuitive in its operation through an easy-to-follow front-end interface is innovative not only due to its design and set of available experiments, but also due to its interdisciplinary teaching style, which combines elements of blended learning, utilization of additive manufacturing technologies and rotor blade design.