Current and Past Offerings

MIE 573: Engineering Windpower Systems

This course was developed over the last thirty years at the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory (RERL, now the Wind Energy Center) at the University of Massachusetts by several faculty members.  In the online version of the course you can learn the fundamentals of energy conversion from wind energy to electricity and its use by society. 

The course covers:

• aerodynamic analysis
• mechanical design
• support structure design
• wind field analysis
• system concepts and analysis
• wind turbine electrical issues
• controls
• system integration
• environmental issues
• economic considerations

For more information, please visit this link

Contact the instructor, Prof. James Manwell, if you have questions: manwell@ecs.umass.edu

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Modeling Wind Turbines with the FAST Code

About this course: umass.edu/windenergy/fast

Course Code: CE-ENGINE 597WT
Anyone can enroll: New, Active, Inactive, Non-Credit Students
Need help or have questions? email regoff@uww.umass.edu or call 413-545-3653

In this course, students will learn how to use the FAST code to simulate wind turbines. FAST is a free, open-source code created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It models the aerodynamics, structural dynamics, hydrodynamics, and control of a wind turbine. Students will learn how to download and run FAST, how to generate and modify input files, and how to analyze output data. At the end of the course students should be highly competent users of FAST, ready to perform loads and energy generation analysis and try out new design modifications of their own.

The course is made up of 9 online modules:

Unit 1: Introduction to OpenFAST

Unit 2: Anatomy of a wind turbine

Unit 3: Pre- and post-processing

Unit 4: ElastoDyn and SubDyn

Unit 5: Aerodyn, InfloWind, and TurbSim

Unit 6: HydroDyn

Unit 7: Floating structures

Unit 8: ServoDyn

Unit 9: Advanced techniques