Enrollment in the Energy Systems master’s in engineering degree program at Illinois has grown to 20 students in just a year’s time, as the students look for a “big picture” understanding of energy solution project management.
“It’s a great beginning, but so far only a small fraction of the potentially interested students know about the Master of Engineering with a Concentration in Energy Systems,” said NPRE Emeritus Prof. Cliff Singer, who co-directs the program. “There are greater things to come."
“This program will prepare some of our brightest students from multiple disciplines and from all over the world to move into management-level roles in the increasing international energy systems arena,” said NPRE Department Head Jim Stubbins. “We are proud to lead this initiative to provide a broad foundation in analysis and applications for the future’s energy leaders.”
See related story, "Taber Fund created to support Energy Systems degree."
Administered by NPRE, the Master of Engineering in Energy Systems degree provides a broad interdisciplinary education for a variety of professional career-track students. The students can earn the degree in a year’s time, choosing their own paths and areas of specialization from a wide array of courses taught across Engineering at Illinois. An internship or energy systems design project is required, and provides students valuable experience that they can bring to private firms, public agencies and laboratories.
Current students have focused their studies in diverse areas, including:
- Electrical energy conversion, transmission and distribution
- Environmental engineering for energy applications
- Energy markets, reliability, safety and security
- Wind energy
- Chemical and materials engineering
- Geologic energy resources
- Solar energy and climate change
- Biomass energy resources
- Thermal energy systems and combustion engines
- Sustainable construction methods and environmental systems
Several of the current students are international.
“I have had a longing desire to explore alternative sources of power in the bid to resolve the erratic power supply in my home country,” said student Olasunkanmi Atinuke Ogunbayo, who came to the program from Nigeria and has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. She has concentrated her master’s degree studies on biomass energy resources, and has completed a project aimed at reducing the energy consumption of a greenhouse building.
“The results of the audit identified space heating using propane gas as the major energy consumer due to the high heating demand” of the greenhouse, Olasunkanmi said. “To reduce the heating demand and resolve heat storage issues, a sustaining hybrid system was designed to capture, recycle and store excess heat. The economics of this system and other energy-saving measures applied in the project were also analyzed to see the potential benefit to the consumer/client.
“My experience in the Energy Systems program has been a huge learning curve. I have gained tremendous knowledge of renewable energy, its application, and its downsides,” Olasunkanmi said. “I have gained insight to the best strategies that can be used to apply renewable energy.”
Student Maria Gironza also would like to bring energy solutions to her home country of Colombia. “I entered this program because I have always been interested in the renewable energy field, and this program gave me the flexibility to choose the specific fields I like: wind power, energy markets and solar energy.”
Gironza, who earned a mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University, said her master’s project will be an extension of an earlier internship that consisted of building a 40-foot, solar energy-powered wooden boat. “My project would be to model and simulate the solar boat using Homer Pro and MatLab (software), and determine the operational costs, the viability of implementation and the efficiency of the solar energy system.”
Having earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering last year in Germany, student Otto Hucke said the Energy Systems program fit perfectly into his plan to study in the United States for a year before continuing graduate studies in Germany in electrical engineering. “I would like to work in a field related to the integration of renewable energy sources in power grids,” Hucke said.
“I think universities offer the unique chance to learn from many different disciplines and to get educated in a broad field,” he said. “Actually, my study plan now includes one electrical and computer engineering class, and the others are from totally different departments like urban planning, geography, and atmospheric sciences. It becomes interesting when you start to see how all these problems are related to your own field of study.”
Student Hursh Hazari, who earned a bachelor’s in technology in polymer science and chemical technology at Delhi Technological University in New Delhi, India, realized during his junior year that he wanted to study renewable energy. “I had taken various courses in materials during my undergraduate and always had a fascination for optics. Therefore, I was convinced that solar energy would be a good fit,” Hazari said.
In summer 2015, Hazari joined a team of 16 students from 10 different countries across the globe as part of a Green Revolution Project in affiliation with AIESEC Mauritius and UN Habitat. “Our objective was to help the people of Mauritius live sustainably by working alongside the government and local organizations.” Also over the summer, he interned for a solar energy start-up company for which he created a solar PV system calculator for off-grid and hybrid systems.
Kumaraswamy Madhu Vellakal Chidambara, who has worked as a computational fluid dynamics engineer for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the Urbana campus the past four years, thought the Energy Systems degree would provide him with more industry-specific theoretical background and research experience.
“I am planning to do a parametric study of an Illini Motorsports team engine to identify vital design parameters that enhance the performance/efficiency of an internal combustion engine, initially based on one-dimensional simulations and later with detailed 3D numerical simulations,” said Vellakal Chidambara of his proposed project. He has a mechanical engineering master’s degree from the University of Buffalo.
Cassandra Arenz, Samantha Davidson, and Justin Scarcliff, all earned their undergraduate degrees at Illinois, in physics, agricultural engineering, and crop and soil management, respectively.
“I want to pursue a career in renewable energy at a utilities company, so this was a perfect fit for the kind of work I wanted to do,” Arenz said. “I am excited about this program because it allows me to continue to work on my technical skills in engineering, while also developing skills in economics, policy, and communication revolving around renewable energy.”
She built her degree project around work she did over the summer for the non-profit organization, Saha Global. “I worked with a team to build a solar charging center in a rural community in Ghana,” Arenz said. “This charging center provides electricity to a community that didn't previously have any, and started a business in the community to empower the women in charge of the business.”
Davidson did a 12-week internship over the summer at Environmental Systems Design, Inc., in Chicago. “I was able to work on commissioning (testing HVAC systems and lighting), retro-commissioning, inputing EnergyStar Data into Portfolio Manager, and seeking LEED certifications for different spaces and/or buildings. Through this, I learned a lot about energy efficiency and how to run equipment efficiently.”
Scarcliff’s farming background has led to his interest in renewable energy, particularly emissions regulations and alternative fuels in large engines.
He currently is doing an internship with Caterpillar, Inc. “I have started researching their micro-grid technology that uses a genset combined with solar cells to produce clean energy in regions that do not have access to power grids.”