Supplemental Cultivation Plan of Innovation Quality for the Undergraduates of Building Environment and Energy Engineering in the Applied Technology Universities

One of the most fundamental qualities for science research and technology development is the innovation quality, which covers many aspects such as consciousness, method and spirit. The innovation quality developed in the undergraduate period would be the most basic foundation in their over forty-years working life. A supplemental cultivation plan with a routine consisting of hardware, programming, simulation and optimization was presented in this paper for the undergraduates of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE). The hardware manufacture of digital devices was trained to promote the freshmen manipulative capability, while software programming with general-purpose languages was introduced to enhance the comprehension of data analysis in the 2nd academic year. During the period when some professional courses were taught, the building simulation modular could be introduced to enhance the understanding for the building thermal process and its corresponding Heating, Ventilating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC & R) system. A building management system (BMS) would be developed step by step and interactive with virtual building platform. That BMS and its virtual cases could be employed as the testbed for optimization of HVAC & R system, such as energy consumption prediction, fault detection and diagnosis. Python and EnergyPlus were used in the custom training program oriented to the employment direction for the system operation and maintenance. Group achievements and individual cases show that the presented supplemental cultivation plan played a very important role in the cultivation of BEEE graduates' innovative quality. The effect for the graduated students need pay more attention to investigate the long-term effects, and more volunteers will participate in this plan to find out their better future.