If a company or government agency is looking to train professionals qualified to promote, design, specify, market and manage clean-energy products and systems, this five-module executive-education certificate offers a unique, comprehensive approach. Employees receive a set of technologically advanced modules that build a professional team trained in clean-energy technologies to meet state renewable-energy requirements. A corporate staff emerges as technically proficient and up-to-date on current practice, ensuring that installers are qualified and perform to standard.
Participants are exposed to graduate-level courses in power, green building and alternative energy technologies, gaining the skills and mindset of clean-energy experts with the required knowledge to design and manage specification, construction and management of clean-energy, alternative-energy, photovoltaic, tidal, hydroelectric, nuclear and wind-powered generation systems. Focused on training engineers and managers, rather than technicians, the certificate is for R&D staff, product developers, and technical managers who influence installations and specifications.
This non-credit executive-education certificate is available as an overview for delivery to senior managers or as an in-depth program for technical personnel. A graduate-credit version is also available. It can be delivered at company sites, online, in blended mode—partly online and partly in classrooms—or at Polytechnic’s satellite campuses everywhere.
Module: Power Systems Economics and Planning
Participants learn about power-system economics, revenue requirements, load duration and reserve requirements. They investigate load forecasting, including econometric methods, and explore optimal expansion planning and methodologies, including optimal generation-expansion computer modeling and decision-analysis techniques. They also explore the deregulation of the electric-power industry and learn efficient use of energy and energy-use analysis to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint. Upon completion, participants should be able to obtain a Certified Energy Management certificate.
Module: Distributed Generation Systems
This module gives employees insight into the benefits and limitations of distributed generating systems. Participants review classification of small generating systems and understand the operating principles of electrical-equivalent circuits of fuel and solar cells, micro-turbines, reciprocating engines, wind turbines and gas turbines. They appreciate fault conditions, reactive-power support and power quality. Employees learn about the engineering, marketing, public communications and policy issues involved with grid-connected alternative and renewable systems, such as photovoltaic arrays and wind-powered electric generators.
Module: Physics of Alternative Energy
This module introduces the physics of nonpetroleum sources of energy—photovoltaic cells, photocatalytic generators of hydrogen from water, and nuclear-fusion reactors. Company staff learn about semiconductor junctions, optical absorption in semiconductors, and the photovoltaic effect. They understand energy-conversion efficiency of silicon solar cells and of single-crystal, polycrystalline and thin-film solar cells. Participants explore the nature of excitons in bulk and in confined geometries, as well as excitons in energy transport in an absorbing structure. They learn about methods of making photocatalytic surfaces and structures for water splitting as well as conditions for nuclear fusion, plasmas and plasma compression. Employees are exposed to toroidal chamber with magnetic coils, nuclear fusion by laser compression (inertial fusion), and small-scale exploratory approaches to fusion based on liquid compression and electric-field ionization of deuterium gas. Engineers and technical managers are steeped in the options available in specifying and designing with alternative systems. The program prepares professionals to understand new alternatives as they come into the market, allowing them to go beyond what is now available.
Module: Infrastructure Planning, Engineering and Economics
The program covers methods for identifying, formulating, preliminarily appraising and analyzing in detail projects and systems in civil engineering. The module offers various approaches appropriate for government agencies, public utilities, industry and private entrepreneurs. Employees learn how to plan projects that satisfy single and multiple purposes and objectives that meet local and regional needs. It provides financial and economic analyses, including sensitivity and risk analysis; presents mathematical models to evaluate alternatives and optimization; and explores the impact of projects, including environmental, social, regional economic growth, legal and institutional, and public involvement. The module introduces technologies and economics of clean buildings, zero-energy buildings and LEED practice in building planning and construction. Upon completion, participants should be able to become LEED-certified professionals.
Module: Capstone Project in Clean Energy Generation and Use
The program introduces theoretical and experimental projects in electrical and computer engineering. Projects are assigned based on a company’s specialized interest. The capstone module is a hands-on practical application of materials covered in previous modules. It encourages participants to delve deeper into actual situations they will face as they implement and integrate clean-energy projects, products and services into their company’s business. At the conclusion, employees present their work before a review board of industry executives, providing a high-level assessment.
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