| Unit name | Energy Management |
|---|---|
| Unit code | EEMEM0009 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Stark |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering |
| Faculty | Faculty of Engineering |
Why is this unit important?
This is a unit about energy and is aimed at students wanting a deep quantitative understanding of the challenges and viable routes forward to address our current energy security, pollution, and climate-change related problems. In this course, you will learn about how we produce, manage, and use energy. This is not, however, a course with a shallow overview of global power systems - it is instead a course about doing relevant, practical, in-depth engineering related to energy management where you will get regular practice with creating solutions to real-world problems.
The subject matter of this unit is focused on sustainable generation and efficient usage of energy. The unit will explore the interfacing of electricity grid and loads with renewable power generation systems and will also cover the functions that are required to manage these; however, we will not consider the component-level detail of the associated electrics. This course will give you a hands-on, up-to-date, practical, broad but quantitative understanding of our energy production and usage, and help you propose viable routes to overcome interesting technical and some non-technical hurdles to creating a world that uses mostly renewable energy.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
This unit is optional on undergraduate programmes. This unit has weekly case study sessions, which involve group-work, interactive discussions, and real-world engineering challenges and design examples in the areas of renewable energy generation and power usage. The unit activities are chosen to give you opportunities to be creative and to apply fundamentals (e.g. electrical, fluid-mechanical, and optical theories), to a range of energy-related problems. The weekly activities will give you skills that help you write your final year project report and that ensure that your future engineering reports are impactful. The unit is designed for engineering programmes where at least a minimal amount of electrical content has already been covered. Prior knowledge of specific electrical subjects such as power electronics or control theory is not required.
An overview of the content
The engineering challenges covered in this unit will involve the front-end generation technologies, e.g. solar power converters, wind turbines, marine and hydropower generators, and “clean” finite fuel technologies. We will be solving challenges relating to the sources’ mechanical and electrical characteristics, the modelling of these, and their incorporation into electrical systems. This includes the fluid mechanics of turbines and electrical characteristics of photovoltaic systems. In addition, the unit addresses energy storage technologies and methods of controlling systems with variable input and output power.
The unit is, however, less about content, and more about practicing important engineering skills, such as finding and creating solutions, putting handles on complex problems, making smart engineering trade-offs etc.
These skills will be trained weekly by working on a variety of challenges. For example, you may:
How will students, personally be different as a result of this unit
Students report that after taking this unit that they have become better engineers and feel much more confident in tackling open-ended design challenges where there is no single solution, no obvious method to tackle the problem, and where assumption and engineering trade-offs need to be made.
Learning outcomes
Having completed this unit, you will be able to:
This unit will be taught through reflective weekly teaching sessions made up of engineering-problem-based group work. You will be expected to engage with self-study via short interactive videos containing short bursts of theory followed by activities, tips, and solutions.
An actively managed forum and regular Q&A sessions will also be available for you to utilise to support your learning on this unit.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
During the unit there will be short, end-of-week (unassessed) quizzes to help you check your understanding.
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
The unit will be assessed by a single open-book computer-based exam in the TB2 assessment period. The exam will assess all Learning Outcomes.
When assessment does not go to plan
In the event of unsatisfactory performance in the examination, there may be an opportunity to resit an exam of a similar nature during the reassessment period.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. EEMEM0009).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
