Abstract:

Marine Energy has been teaching for six years in the University of Basque Country, as an optional subject of the Grade in Engineering of Renewable Energies, in Eibar. Students can take this subject during their last year and the focus is practical. In the last editions hands-on computer exercises and practicals at a research laboratory have been combined to transmit the students the contents of the subject.

The whole approach at the different parts of the subject is Project-Based Learning (PBL) and to that purpose, the open source programming language R https://cran.r-project.org/ plays an important role.

R is a powerful language that is mainly used for statistical and graphical analysis and we have applied it in the spatio-temporal analysis of wave energy and data processing of lab experiments. For example, students learn how to visualize the potential of wave energy, and temperature or salinity gradient. Students also learn where to extract data from, either reanalysis like ERA5 https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/home or different satellite data such as ENVISAT https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/?id=517&L=0

Finally, students are taken to visit operational facilities of wave energy like Mutriku and also do some practicals at a research laboratory specifically designed to carry out lab-scale experiments of waves and wave energy converters (WEC). All these aspects are succesfully addressed and solved with R, a most interesting tool for problem solving, self-learning and learning by problems methods. The educational results are most satisfactory and students after finishing their studies, are ready to work in real-life facilities and laboratories in the field of wave energy.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, Marine Energy, R programming language, lab practicals.