Solar and wind technologies are established technologies for supplying electricity on or off grid. But do they make sense in a given application? And once they have been constructed, how can one track their performance in order to detect faults and to ensure that they are meeting expected performance levels? This course addresses both these questions. It provides an introducton to wind and solar energy technologies, and shows how the RETScreen Expert software tool (www.retscreen.net) can be used to conduct preliminary feasibility studies of on- or off-grid solar photovoltaic and on-grid wind projects, and introduces performance analysis for on-grid solar projects.

Upon completion of the course, the participants should be able to:

• Be familiar with the main components in a on-grid or off-grid photovoltaic or wind energy system
• Understand the important elements of prefeasibility analysis for power systems (energy, costs, greenhouse gases, and financial analysis)
• Understand how to use metrics like the net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period to evaluate a proposed project’s profitability and impact on cashflows
• Understand how to use regression to build statistical models that relate solar project performance to measured weather conditions
• Identify time periods when faults are affecting solar system performance
• Normalize actual solar project performance to typical meteorological conditions
• Use RETScreen Expert to conduct prefeasibility analyses of on-grid/off-grid photovoltaic and on-grid wind projects
• Use RETScreen Expert to conduct performance analyses of on-grid photovoltaic systems

1. Prefeasibility and feasibility assessment of on-grid solar photovoltaic and wind projects and off-grid solar photovoltaic projects. Using RETScreen Expert’s simple energy, financial, and greenhouse gas emissions models, we will determine how much energy a project will generate or save, whether that will result in a profitable project, and the level of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Analysis of monitored data from solar photovoltaic projects through regression techniques. Using RETScreen Expert’s performance analysis capabilities, we will investigate the underlying performance of an energy project by stripping away performance variation due to weather. This can be used to detect faults, verify that performance targets are being met, catch errors in data, and normalize performance estimates for typical weather conditions.

• Electrical and energy engineers
• Project managers
• Industrial/commercial/residential facility owner/operators
• Energy project proponents/entrepreneurs
• Consultants
• Policy-makers in the field of energy
• Green builders

• Short presentations will introduce the main elements of wind and solar projects and technologies, financial analysis, and regression analysis.
• As a class, we will work through feasibility and performance analyses using the RETScreen software. This will introduce new topics related to the solar and wind resource, the technologies, their capabilities, their costs, GHG emissions accounting, and financial metrics. As these come up, they will be discussed in turn, sometimes with mini-presentations.
• There will be additional hands-on case studies in which the participants will carry out feasibilty and performance analyses using the RETScreen software. Solutions to these case studies will be discussed in class.
• Participants in the course will be provided with a training licence for the latest version of RETScreen Expert software.

This training, with a duration of 16 hours, will run on the following days:

11, 12, 18 & 19 October 2023 | Course Language: English
13:30 – 17:30 BST | Break: 15:30 – 16:00
14:30 – 18:30 CEST | Break: 16:30 – 17:00

The registration fee is 480.00 €  + VAT (23%), a total value of 590.40 € payable to CENERTEC until the date of the Course and includes:

• Access to the E-Learning Platform
• Access to Supporting Documentation
• Certificate of Participation