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Renewable Energy Students visit European Green Energy Pioneer: Denmark

Recently the two current cohorts of the MSc Renewable Energy Systems made a field trip to Denmark, more specifically Copenhagen. The yearly Country Module serves as an integrative part in the program to gain first-hand knowledge from industry pioneers, get to know exciting projects and gain market insights. It is also a great opportunity for the students of different cohorts to get to know each other, share experiences and do some networking.

Students on off-shore wind turbine

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students on Country Module - 2022

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PV project in Denmark

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On the first day they got a tour of Copenhill, a waste-to-energy power plant which doubles as a skiing hill, it is located on an industrial waterfront and is capable of converting 440,000 tons of waste into clean energy annually (https://www.copenhill.dk/en, opens an external URL in a new window).  After the tour of Copenhill, they were welcomed into the offices of the Company Ørsted and got insights into their work from a market analyst, a data analyst and a technical trainee. Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen and green fuels facilities, and bioenergy plants (https://orsted.com/, opens an external URL in a new window).

On Friday, the second day, they got the chance to climb an Offshore Wind turbine which is part of the wind farm Middelgrunden, built in 2000, located just outside of Copenhagen’s harbor. After a short boat trip to the wind farm, the students were able to first get on the platform and then also climb all the way up to the top of the turbine. All the students were amazed by this very special experience (https://www.middelgrunden.dk/middelgrunden-wind-farm/, opens an external URL in a new window).

Saturday started a bit earlier, because the group took a bus to the west coast in order to take a ferry to Denmark’s renewable energy island Samsø. The director of the Energy Academy which is largely responsible for the sustainable life on the island, picked them up at the harbor and gave them a tour of the whole island, talking about the history, the people and the goals of the island (https://energiakademiet.dk/en/, opens an external URL in a new window).

To end a very interesting trip, the group visited the technical university of Denmark, DTU and got a tour of the electrical engineering campus from its head of technical staff there. He also talked about the status of the energy transition in Denmark, its strategies, its goals and answered all the student’s questions (https://www.dtu.dk/english, opens an external URL in a new window).

After all the input they received, the students were fascinated by all the research and projects Denmark is working on and were talking a lot about what they were doing right and what they could learn from this trip.