An alternative approach to power engineering [education]

In a drive to attract more students, three new courses have been introduced at the Department of Electric Power Engineering of the Technical University of Denmark. Among many students, power engineering has a reputation of being old-fashioned and static, whereas information technology is regarded as young and dynamic. Consequently, the new courses apply IT as a gateway to power engineering. The courses present the students with: (1) a meaningful, easy understandable power engineering problem; (2) a realistic set-up in the laboratory; and (3) a microprocessor system used as a tool to solve the problem. The students work mainly with programming but as the course develops they gain preliminary insight into the field of power engineering and experience that it is a broad field exploiting various advanced disciplines. In addition, course timing is highly important. Students must be confronted at an early stage of their study before they make a decision to specialise.