UMass Professor Launches Online Offshore Wind Course

Upon returning from a national wind conference, IGERT Professor Lackner recognized that there was critical need to build a knowledge bridge between wind engineers and other disciplines.

He realized that often during professional and public discourse around wind in general, and offshore wind energy development in particular, there were communication barriers based on both vocabulary and basic understanding of engineering principles, e.g. how wake effects dictate turbine spacing within a wind farm.

To respond to this need, he pulled together a multi-disciplinary group of IGERT non-engineers and an IGERT engineering student as a TA, to develop an online course for non-engineers about how wind projects are designed and built. The course was developed around a cradle to grave concept and covered the engineering of pre-construction surveys, construction, operation, and decommissioning.

The course will be taught online in the summer of 2014, beginning on July 7th . Each section will have assigned reading and problems sets. The intended audience is professionals working on all aspects of offshore wind from lawyers, to federal regulators, to environmental NGOs.