Promoting Renewable Energy in Africa (PREA)

MSc Course Integration of Renewable Energy in Buildings

European Masters Course: Integrating Renewable Energies In Buildings

The European Masters courses in 'Integrating Renewable Energies in Buildings' are tailored for professionals working in the built environment who want to acquire specialist skills and knowledge in low energy design, an increasingly important international field. They give a practical and theoretical grounding to architects and building professionals. Skills are developed in a range of different methodologies for evaluating environmental conditions and predicting the effects of design solutions. These include data collection and interpretation methods and computer-based and physical simulations of buildings, set within a framework of low energy design principles, and against a background of often conflicting theories of sustainability. Similar courses will be developed in Africa adopting and adapting teaching materials developed within the European course to provide in particular guidance on low cost, low energy housing.

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Structure and Curricula for African MSc Courses is based on the existing European Masters Course "IREB - Integration of Renewable Energies in Buildings" which is structured as followed: Students take two core modules, three other specialist taught modules, the thesis preparation/research methods module and complete a thesis.

1. Core modules

1.1 Energy Comfort and Buildings

Aims and objectives

To develop an understanding of the necessity for low energy buildings in the context of global warming;
To appreciate the techniques and design principles for energy efficient buildings.
Chapter 1: Energy, Environment and Climate
Chapter 2: Human Comfort
Chapter 3: Heating Cooling
Chapter 4: Lighting
Chapter 5: Principles of Renewables

1.2 Low Energy Architecture

Aims and Objectives
To equip students with an understanding of the design principals and techniques used to create energy efficient buildings and enable them to make informed critical evaluations of low energy architectural proposals.
The module considers the issues in relation to domestic and non domestic buildings by examining the technical issues against broader design concerns and attempts to clarify where energy efficiency issues effect architectural decisions. The module deals with design and energy proposals at strategic levels and develops frameworks for making comparative judgements between appropriate low energy strategies in differ- ent European and other climatic regions. Introduce architects and engineers to the interdependence of design, cultural, technological and scientific factors in producing low energy architecture. Chapter 1: Integration with Building Services Chapter 2: Integration in Buildings Chapter 3: Energy Assessment Chapter 4: Energy in Urban Environment Chapter 5: Environmental issues

2. Specialist modules (examples)

2.1 Daylight and Energy Efficient Artificial Lighting
2.2 Natural Ventilation
2.3 Energy in the Urban Environment
2.4 Building simulation
2.5 Building Performance: Measurement and Analytical Methods
2.6 Thermal Comfort
2.7 Airflow Patterns in Buildings and Indoor Air Quality
2.8 Coupled Heat transfer Modelling in Buildings and Evaluation of Passive Conditioning Strategies
2.9 Control and supervision of Conditioning Systems
2.10 Renewable Energies in Active Systems
2.11 Low-Energy Heating and Cooling
2.12 Energy Use in the Built Environment

For further information see this page.