Walking the Talk…

It was with mixed feelings that I read the most recent EUREC Masters newsletter (December 2011). Recently the Agency attended the European University Association’s 6th European Quality Assurance Forum, the main theme of which was “Quality and Trust: at the heart of what we do.”

I would like to extract a piece from the short article and analyse it from my perspective (emphasis my own):

“The main themes developed along the sessions and workshops were trust, the need for transparent information and the importance of all stakeholders’ involvement, in particular students’ involvement, in the quality assurance processes.
The tools developed for the EUREC Master programme are in line with these recommendations, and are regularly checked and reviewed in order to constantly improve the quality of the EUREC Master.”

I will look at each bold word/phrase from the above passage in turn:

• Trust/transparent information – More than two years ago, due to a lack of trust, I asked Paola Mazzuchelli to make publicly available a detailed breakdown of how the student fees are allocated. I have yet to receive a response.
• Students involvement, in the quality assurance process/tools developed – It would be interesting for EUREC to report on exactly how students are involved in the quality assurance of the course as well as to flesh out in detail the tools that have been developed to do so.
• Regularly checked and reviewed – For the sake of transparency it would be good to know who checks what, how they check it, how regularly it is done and what happens if things are not up to scratch.

Open Letter of Complaint to the EUREC Steering Committee, Version 2

My apologies but this post is going to be long! My apologies too, to all those people who were considering applying for the EUREC masters in 2010, that I didn’t provide an update sooner.

Well it has been a long haul concerning my letter of complaint and, as far as I see it, there are still many outstanding points. I’m currently waiting for a response from Ms Paola Mazzucchelli (director general of the EUREC agency), representing the EUREC Masters Steering Committee, to my latest email. Yes, there have been a number of emails between her and myself and the intention of this post is to put up our email interactions, word for word. So brace yourself, it could get boring for some but will hopefully serve its purpose for others by telling the full story from both sides.

First lets go back to the initial instalment where I boldly stated my claims on the 25^th of October 2009. In addition to my blog post, I sent the following email to all the members of the EUREC Masters steering committee, EUREC administrators at each of the member universities as well as the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 EUREC students:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Roy Emmerich
Date: 2009/10/25
Subject: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master ProgrammeDear Ms. Mazzucchelli, Mr. Golba, Prof. Schmid, Prof. Mayer, Prof. Eames, Prof. Valero, Prof. Zervos, Prof. Pearsall, EUREC administrators, EUREC 2007 and EUREC 2008 students,Attached please find the PDF document entitled:

eurec_masters_programme_open_letter_of_complaint-final.pdf

Yours sincerely

Roy Emmerich
EUREC masters student 2008-2009

———- Message End ———-

I received a mixed reaction from my fellow students. Some were very supportive while others were somewhat aghast at my straightforward approach to the matter and said that I was being disrespectful. This initial email of mine was shortly followed up by a response from Ms Mazzucchelli two days later:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Paola Mazzucchelli
Date: 2009/10/27
Subject: RE: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme

Dear Roy and all,

please, be ensured of the fact that EUREC Agency and the Master Programme Committee are open to listen to and discuss your complaints in a frank and constructive way.

This is also why we ask our students to fill in a satisfaction survey at the end of each Academic Year.

Normally, we send it after you have handed in your Master thesis, in order not to burden you with an additional task. However, given the urgency coming from your letter and emails, I attach it so that you can provide us with your feedback before the Presentation days. From last year’s results, I had not felt this general dissatisfaction.

Given the seriousness of the complaints, the Programme Committee will carefully look into them, and come up with an official response by beginning of November.

In the meantime, however, I would like to clarify few points:

• EUREC Master website: we have, indeed, been victim of a virus attack during the months of June and July. The situation should be solved by now, and we have also introduced a stronger filter, so that passwords are no more sent automatically to everyone, but a previous approval is needed. However, if you still receive spamming from the master email, please, let me know
• EUREC staff dedicated to the Master course: since August, as you will have noticed, I am personally answering to your emails and requests
• If you need some additional documents (e.g. the list of projects), you can ask me directly. The fact that some documents are not made generally available depends on the fact that we want to keep track of whom has access to them

I am really sorry to hear such a number of negative feedbacks coming from your side, especially since I had not received such strong and negative signs during the Academic Year, but was only very recently contacted directly by Roy.

We have always kept an attentive ear to your needs and tried to serve you at our best. As I have already said, we are open to frankly discuss your concerns, and are supportive of initiatives, which help us in providing you a better service.

We will come back to you by the beginning of November.

Kind regards,

Paola

Paola Mazzucchelli

Secretary General

EUREC Agency

rue d´Arlon 63-67

B-1040 Brussels

Belgium

———- Message End ———-

At this point word was beginning to get out into wider circles about my letter of complaint. A EUREC alumnus from the 2005-2006 academic year forwarded me a letter, also addressed to the EUREC Masters Steering Committee, that he and a group of fellow students had compiled while reading the EUREC Masters in Renewable Energy. This letter listed a number of concerns and suggestions for improvement. It was coincidental that many of their points overlapped with the points I am making and it was clear to us that absolutely no progress had been made by EUREC on improving the situation since 2006. Unfortunately I am unable to provide a link to this document as my fellow alumnus felt it needed the consent of all 15 signatories so I decided not to push the issue. Instead you will have to be happy with a copy of my email to the EUREC Masters Steering Committee:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Roy Emmerich
Date: 2009/11/4
Subject: Re: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme

Dear Ms. Mazzucchelli, Mr. Golba, Prof. Schmid, Prof. Mayer, Prof. Eames, Prof. Valero, Prof. Zervos, Prof. Pearsall, EUREC administrators, EUREC 2007 and EUREC 2008 students,

[Ms. Mazzucchelli --> all]

please, be ensured of the fact that EUREC Agency and the Master Programme Committee are open to listen to and discuss your complaints in a frank and constructive way.

…

We have always kept an attentive ear to your needs and tried to serve
you at our best.

[Roy]
From what Ms. Mazzucchelli said in her initial response, extracted above, one would assume this was the first sign of dissatisfaction of this nature, certainly this year, and possibly ever before by EUREC students.

Following the release of my open letter of complaint, it has come to my attention that a very similar letter was compiled by the 2005/2006 EUREC group.

Just to refresh your memories I have attached this letter entitled:

2005-2006_eurec_group_criticism_final.pdf

I look forward not only to an attentive ear but practical solutions too.

Yours sincerely
Roy Emmerich
EUREC masters student 2008-2009

———- Message End ———-

At the beginning of December 2009 I then received an email from Ms Mazzucchelli with the promised official response which can be found here:

Official EUREC response accompanied by email below (pdf – 50 kB)

As far as I’m concerned the letter above tells me nothing more than what I can already get from the EUREC Masters Programme website. In fact I find a lot of it amounts to political blabbering. Trying to make oneself look more successful than you really are. However the most important points I thought were:

• the admission of guilt on a number of issues I raised,
• as well as the following quote: “However, we understand that it is far from being exhaustive and touching upon all the points that you have raised.“
  

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Paola Mazzucchelli
Date: 1 December 2009 13:35
Subject: RE: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme

Dear Roy,

Please, see attached the requested reply to your complaint letter.

We hope that it can be used as a basis for a fruitful discussion on 14th December 2009.

Kind regards

Paola Mazzucchelli
Secretary General
EUREC Agency
rue d´Arlon 63-67
B-1040 Brussels
Belgium

———- Message End ———-

Things got a bit hectic at this point as it was nearing the time of thesis hand in so I was unable to prepare properly for the meeting on the 14th of December 2009. It was in no way productive! It basically ended up in a slanging match with team Spain making a spirited attack claiming I didn’t know what I was talking about and team England saying that the core modules at the various universities (Loughborough, Oldenburg, Zaragoza and Ecole des Mines) were never intended to be the same. So I left Brussels with a heavy heart concerning these matters but was still resolute in wanting  to find proper answers to my questions. Clearly this is an emotive topic and maybe the conversation is best conducted at a distance via email where people can carefully construct responses. So over the festive season I let things simmer down and burst out of the blocks with the following in mid February:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Roy Emmerich
Date: 17 February 2010 14:05
Subject: Re: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme
To: Paola Mazzucchelli

Dear Ms Mazzucchelli,

On 1 December 2009 12:35, Paola Mazzucchelli wrote:
> Please, see attached the requested reply to your complaint letter.
> We hope that it can be used as a basis for a fruitful discussion on 14th December 2009.

[Roy]
I trust you had a restful festive season and have now had the time to settle back into the 2010 work year? I would very much like to update my blog with the most recent activities surrounding my letter of complaint which I wrote last year.

As I’m sure you are aware, many of the points in my letter were not discussed during this meeting. I would therefore like to offer you the opportunity, in conjunction with the EUREC Steering Committee, to supply me with a full, written response addressing each of my points in turn.

As I see it, the following items still need to be thoroughly addressed by the EUREC Masters Programme Steering Committee:

1. Course accreditation
2. Course fees
3. Poor website
4. Rubrics for core and specialisation providers
5. Keeping lecture notes updated
6. Finding a thesis
7. Practical aspects of the course (e.g. laboratories)

What I would really like you and the rest of the steering committee to realise is that my complaint isn’t just about a list of issues I have with the way things are managed. There is a higher goal to all of this. Essentially this goal is for the EUREC Masters in Renewable Energy to become the best degree for renewable energy training that is humanly possible to achieve. I think it is quite possible.

However from my perspective, the only certain thing I got from the meeting on 14 December 2009 is that the EUREC masters is made up of a consortium of universities, essentially following their own path, with no shared plan guiding the development of the degree, with the EUREC agency merely supplying the logo and fulfilling an administrative role. Instead I expected EUREC to be the driving force behind the development of the degree. I see no definitive leader of the programme. Without a leader you will get lost. In fact I think you (EUREC) probably lost your master programme visionary somewhere along the way and continue to muddle along somehow. This is hardly a recipe for success. Or at least this is the way I see things.

What frustrates me most is the lack of real engagement from the EUREC side. You say you are concerned but I don’t feel it. So please, if you want me to write something positive on my blog, respond to my letter with some form of concern, some iota of gusto or passion. Please!

One last thing. Next time there is a meeting where something as important as the points above are discussed, please have the decency to sit down, look the person in the eye and at least pretend you are concentrating! Somebody else can serve the beers.

Many thanks
Roy
P.S. I will leave it to you to forward this email to the rest of the
Steering Committee.

———- Message End ———-

I was expecting a terse response after an email like this and I certainly got it:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Paola Mazzucchelli
Date: 18 February 2010 16:32
Subject: RE: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme
To: Roy Emmerich

Dear Roy,

To my knowledge, all your issues were discussed.
You also received an official letter from us sometime ago explaining the actions that we were taking and that you promised to upload on your blog.

Kind regards,
Paola Mazzucchelli

EUREC Agency
Secretary General

———- Message End ———-

To which I responded in detail pointing out, what I thought was a very clear manner, how my points had in no way been adequately answered:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Roy Emmerich
Date: 25 February 2010 23:56
Subject: Re: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme
To: Paola Mazzucchelli

Dear Ms Mazzucchelli,

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
> To my knowledge, all your issues were discussed.

[Roy]
Only some aspects were discussed at the meeting in Brussels on 14 December 2009 but, from my perspective, there was certainly no clear consensus reached. Furthermore, your letter of response only goes so far as to acknowledge guilt on a number of the points I raised but I don’t think this is sufficient. As the letter of complaint from the 2005-2006 EUREC students attests, many of the same issues were raised then and still no improvement is visible. Therefore, below is a list of the questions I would like answered in a clear and unambiguous way with certain requests for concrete information, ideas and timelines. Once this information has been provided I will leave you in peace and then you (the EUREC Steering Committee) can be held accountable by those students who come after me and hopefully also by the newly formed alumni group.

My questions:

1. In your response letter you mention a EUREC Master equivalence certificate. You mention that this letter from EUREC is “fully
recognised in their own country.”

1.1 Please substantiate this claim with written proof?

1.2 Would the EUREC Master equivalence certificate be recognised by other institutions in these countries? Please substantiate this claim with written proof?

1.3 Would the EUREC Master equivalence certificate be recognised by the rest of Europe? Please substantiate this claim with written proof?

1.4 Would the EUREC Master equivalence certificate be recognised by the rest of the world? Please substantiate this claim with written proof?

1.5 If you are unable to substantiate questions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, may I ask when the course will be accredited, either individually in each of the consortium member countries or via a blanket accord such as the Bologna Process?

2. How much money does EUREC require to administer each student for the duration of the course?

3. In your response letter you acknowledge the poor state of the EUREC masters website. By when and how will the website layout and content be improved?

4. In your response letter you acknowledge that EUREC needs to assist students more with finding project placements.

4.1 How will new students be timeously provided with the spreadsheet that you maintain which holds the details of previous EUREC master student projects without having to ask for it personally?

4.2 In what other ways will EUREC provide further assistance for project placements and by when will this support be in place?

5. Will EUREC provide a searchable, online database of all publicly available, completed master theses? Here is a good example of how a competitor is doing this:

Theses title list
http://newenergy.tuwien.ac.at/english/students/master_theses/

Full text download:
http://tinyurl.com/yekp7cu

6. It is clear the content taught by the various core providers, as well as the teaching methods used, is very different.

6.1 Is there an intention by EUREC to iron out these differences by moving towards a common rubric for the core providers? If so, how and by when will this be achieved?

6.2 If this is not the case, how and by when will these differences be conveyed to prospective students so that they are able to make an informed decision regarding which core provider would suit them best?

6.3 Is there any intention to supply a more detailed course breakdown for each of the specialisation modules so that students are able to make a more informed decision regarding which specialisation would suit them best or whether this degree is able to meet their expectations? If so, how and by when will this be done?

7. Is there any intention for EUREC to get to know exactly what is taught by each of the member institutions and to systematically evaluate the quality of the teaching and materials or will this continue to be based purely on a trust relationship as stated by Prof. Mayer at the meeting in Brussels on 14 December 2009?

Many thanks for your understanding on these matters which are so important to me,

Regards
Roy
P.S. Once again I will leave it to you to forward this email to the remainder of the EUREC Steering Committee.

———- Message End ———-

At this point it certainly seemed to me EUREC was playing a political strategy game with me, hoping, now that I had graduated, I would just go away and shut the hell up. Well I can be a rather determined bloke and I would really like to bring this discussion to some meaningful conclusion. As usual Ms Mazzucchelli humoured me with a response:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Paola Mazzucchelli
Date: 11 March 2010 19:54
Subject: RE: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme
To: Roy Emmerich

1.1 http://www.master.eurec.be/node/14

1.2 http://www.master.eurec.be/node/14

1.3 http://www.master.eurec.be/node/14

1.4 http://www.master.eurec.be/node/14. We have provided a European Diploma Supplement to different non-EU students who applied to PhDs outside Europe (e.g. Canada)

2. Total cost for EUREC is 9.000EUR for EU students and 11.000EUR for non-EU students.

3. Content will be improved/updated before the beginning of next AY in September/October 2010. Changes to the layout will be discussed in 2011.

4.1 They’ll have a projects list by the end of March 2010 with all additional information on project regulations

4.2 We sent information on students (degree, core, spec, field of interest…) to all our contacts by mid-February requesting them to contact those students who looked interesting to them

5. This might be discussed in 2011. It is not a priority in 2010.

6.1 This is not the point of the EUREC Master, as you were told in December. The core semester provides the students with the same level of knowledge on RETs to then move to the chosen spec. The fact that no students coming from the same core have repeatedly failed the chosen spec. clearly shows that our objective is reached

6.2 It will be made clearer on the website

6.3 Core universities are supposed to additionally provide help to the students on the choice of specializations. We will have the universities to provide us with updated course content to be uploaded on the website before the beginning of next AY

7. This is regularly discussed and done by the Steering Committee+ through students’ feedbacks collected before the end of the course

———- Message End ———-

During this period I went on a long holiday back home to South Africa and, upon my return to Germany, started a new job. This topic naturally fell to the bottom of my priority list and took a while to surface again. But when it did I responded to Ms. Mazzucchelli with an email stating that I was unfortunately still not satisfied with her answers:

———- Message Begin ———-
From: Roy Emmerich
Date: 7 June 2010 01:38
Subject: Re: Open Letter of Complaint Concerning the EUREC Master Programme
To: Paola Mazzucchelli

Dear Ms Mazzucchelli,

My apologies for the slow response. I’ve recently returned from a holiday to South Africa and am busy settling into my new job. Life got a lot busier again. It reminds me a bit of Oldenburg.

[Roy 1]
1. In your response letter you mention a EUREC Master equivalence certificate. You mention that this letter from EUREC is “fully recognised in their own country.”

1.1 Please substantiate this claim with written proof?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
http://www.master.eurec.be/node/14

[Roy 2]
I would still like to be able to download, from the EUREC website, 4 official documents from the 4 core universities which state that the degree has been through some form of accreditation overseen by recognised groups within each member country which are independent of the people who are involved with the degree.

As an example, I will quote section 8.3 (Approval/Accreditation of Programmes and Degrees in the German Higher Education System) from a document which was included in the info pack handed to me at my graduation by Edu Knagge.

“To ensure quality and comparability of qualifications, the organization of studies and general degree requirements have to conform to principles and regulations established by the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK). In 1999, a system of accreditation for programmes of study has become operational under the control of an Accreditation Council at national level. All new programmes have to be accredited under this scheme; after a successful accreditation they receive the quality-label of the Accreditation Council.”

Now, I would really appreciate being able to download a document from this German Accreditation Council stating that my degree, based in Oldenburg, has been approved. Is this possible?

Another question. Is the German Accreditation Council aware of the EUREC Master equivalence certificate?

[Roy]
2. How much money does EUREC require to administer each student for the duration of the course?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
Total cost for EUREC is 9.000EUR for EU students and 11.000EUR for non-EU students.

[Roy 2]
Either you don’t understand my question (highly unlikely) or you are trying to sidestep it (i.e. not answer it clearly). What I want to know is the following. The EUREC office in Brussels has to pay for office space, staff, stationary, electricity, water, etc. to administer the EUREC master programme. I would like to know how much this cost amounts to as a Euro/student number.

Let me be even clearer. Consider my case. I paid 11000 Euro for the course. Of this fee, Oldenburg was paid 2300 Euro, Kassel was paid 2500 Euro and the rest (6200 Euro) went to the EUREC office. I would like to know how much of the money that the EUREC office kept was used on administration tasks? I’m expecting it to be a fixed number as per the fixed amounts that go to the universities. I’m also expecting it to be MUCH less than the amount the universities need to teach us as the amount of work the EUREC office puts into administration can in no way be compared to the work the universities put into teaching the students.

Let’s be outrageous and assume all students in my year were European and went to Loughborough and Northumbria. Total fees paid per student would be 9000 Euro. University costs would be 2 x 3650 = 7300 Euro, leaving 1700 Euro per student for EUREC admin fees. Now this is the worst case scenario. I know that a very high percentage of your students are non-European and very few of them attend the Loughborough, UK core (due mainly to the high cost, only 2 out of 36 did the core there in my year).

So what I’m trying to find out from you is where all the money goes and whether you know where it goes or whether it is just spent without having a firm grasp on what it is being spent on or whether it could be spent on better things. I want a fixed number, essentially a budget, something that you would have drawn up at the beginning of the year to get a grip on your expenses. Do you have this information available? I hope my question and my motives are crystal clear now?

[Roy]
3. In your response letter you acknowledge the poor state of the EUREC masters website. By when and how will the website layout and content be improved?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
Content will be improved/updated before the beginning of next AY in September/October 2010. Changes to the layout will be discussed in 2011.

[Roy 2]
Upon reflection I realise words like “improve” are qualitative and therefore very difficult to measure. Is there a more concrete yardstick you can provide by which this progress can be measured?

[Roy]
4. In your response letter you acknowledge that EUREC needs to assist students more with finding project placements.

4.1 How will new students be timeously provided with the spreadsheet that you maintain which holds the details of previous EUREC master student projects without having to ask for it personally?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
They’ll have a projects list by the end of March 2010 with all additional information on project regulations

[Roy 2]
Would it not make sense to provide students this list upon registration? That way they would have more time to investigate options. Another idea would be to encourage them to sign up for the free online magazine, Renewable Energy World (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/magazine). This contains lots of adverts for companies in the RE industry as well as being an instant window into their chosen new world. This is an easy, “no effort on your part” suggestion.

[Roy]
4.2 In what other ways will EUREC provide further assistance for project placements and by when will this support be in place?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
We sent information on students (degree, core, spec, field of interest…) to all our contacts by mid-February requesting them to contact those students who looked interesting to them

[Roy 2]
I don’t think this is an effective approach. I don’t know of anybody who has successfully landed a project from the EUREC contacts. Maybe you need to rethink your approach. Why not ask the students themselves how you could best assist them? After all they are the ones needing the help. It is best to ask the current batch for feedback each year around the early October mark, before things get too busy near the submission date. Feedback from this year could then be evaluated and implemented for the following year. This iterative approach will eventually result in the most effective help for students. And if the students see you actually being helpful they will be more willing to give suggestions.

[Roy]
5. Will EUREC provide a searchable, online database of all publicly available, completed master theses? Here is a good example of how a competitor is doing this:

Theses title list
http://newenergy.tuwien.ac.at/english/students/master_theses/

Full text download:
http://tinyurl.com/yekp7cu

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
This might be discussed in 2011. It is not a priority in 2010.

[Roy 2]
Okay, I have put this deadline on my calendar to remind me to contact you for feedback by the end of February 2011.

[Roy]
6. It is clear the content taught by the various core providers, as well as the teaching methods used, is very different.

6.1 Is there an intention by EUREC to iron out these differences by moving towards a common rubric for the core providers? If so, how and by when will this be achieved?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
This is not the point of the EUREC Master, as you were told in December. The core semester provides the students with the same level of knowledge on RETs to then move to the chosen specialisation.

[Roy 2]
Can you not see you are contradicting yourself? I say the material taught in the cores should be standardised or at least made similar. You say it is not the point for the cores to be the same/similar, but then go on to state, “The core semester provides students with the same level of knowledge of RETs.” Now this statement is complete nonsense! This is absolute mis-information Ms Mazzucchelli. The cores could not be more dissimilar than they currently are. It is quite clear the various programmes have developed in complete isolation of each other and are masquerading as one, unified course behind the EUREC logo. At best this is a wish, at worst an out and out lie!

If it is not your intention to standardise the core modules then I’d strongly suggest you make it abundantly clear to prospective students that the cores are completely different and were never intended to be the same. It should be made clear that each university decides independently what is taught and how it is taught. It is then your (EUREC’s) responsibility to get each core to provide a detailed curriculum saying exactly what is taught and how it is taught so that students can choose which core they would like to attend.

Anything less would be misleading.

[Roy]
6.3 Is there any intention to supply a more detailed course breakdown for each of the specialisation modules so that students are able to make a more informed decision regarding which specialisation would suit them best or whether this degree is able to meet their expectations? If so, how and by when will this be done?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
Core universities are supposed to additionally provide help to the students on the choice of specializations. We will have the universities to provide us with updated course content to be uploaded on the website before the beginning of next AY

[Roy 2]
So the deadline for the applications for the next academic year are at the end of July 2010 if I’m not mistaken? Has any progress been made in this regard?

[Roy]
7. Is there any intention for EUREC to get to know exactly what is taught by each of the member institutions and to systematically evaluate the quality of the teaching and materials or will this continue to be based purely on a trust relationship as stated by Prof. Mayer at the meeting in Brussels on 14 December 2009?

[Ms Mazzucchelli]
This is regularly discussed and done by the Steering Committee+ through students’ feedbacks collected before the end of the course

[Roy 2]
I don’t think this is sufficient. I believe this information would strongly support my point above, in providing a detailed breakdown for each specialisation for prospective students.

The feeling I get is that the EUREC office doesn’t actually know what gets taught in either the core or specialisation modules. In detail that is. You may have a “hand wavy” overview but I don’t think you really know what gets taught at an in-depth level. What worries me even more is that you don’t have the technical capacity to know what should be taught or at least provide educated suggestions for improvement. There is no committee who can provide sound advice on how the programmes should evolve over a period of time.

Let me give you an example. The Kassel specialisation was set up mainly by two men, namely Ingo Stadler and Franz Kinninger. Naturally this was under the guidance of Prof. Jürgen Schmid and I presume Telsche Nielsen was there to offer her advice, albeit from a technically unqualified standpoint. Now if we look at this department today, you will notice that not one of these people is still in the employ of Kassel University. As far as I know there has been very little development of the course work since it was set up by Messers Stadler and Kinninger in 2002. You, Ms Mazzucchelli, are also very new to the EUREC office and are probably unaware of these facts. I’m also not certain who is responsible for making sure the Kassel specialisation is kept up to date. Is it just the Kassel employees? Or should the EUREC office somehow be involved too? From my vantage point it looks like a house of cards waiting to be blown over by the very slightest of breezes.

Can you tell me what sort of knowledge transfer has occurred from Prof. Schmid and Telsche Nielsen to the new incumbent, Prof Dr. Debora Coll-Mayor? Will she just take up the reigns and keep things as they are or will the course be changed completely? Do you care? Should you care? I think you should care deeply about what goes on in Kassel. In fact you should be doing a lot more than just caring, you should be making sure the content adheres to some master plan that is frequently reviewed by some or other board of expert renewable energy engineers convened by the EUREC office. It’s these types of aspects that unsettle me Ms Mazzucchelli. You are at the whim of the people who head up each core and specialisation module. You (EUREC) provide absolutely no quality control and I don’t think you are currently able to. This is an unacceptable situation to me and unfortunately, until I see a change for the better, I will continue to encourage people to look wider when considering enrolling in the EUREC master programme.

I look forward to your response with anticipation.

Regards
Roy
P.S. Please note that I intend publishing this email conversation on my blog when it reaches a logical conclusion.

———- Message End ———-

And if you’ve managed to follow things down to here then you really are a keen bean! Well done. But if you’ve been paying attention then you will notice that this saga is far from over. I will continue to push until either I get to a point where I’m making some headway or hit a brick wall of resistance. Either way you will hear from me sooner or later. I at least hope this will provide some (a lot perhaps?) feedback about what has been going on behind the scenes.

The Haeusleberg Project

A view over the Häusleberg Farm

Last year I got to hear of a small group of EUREC alumni (2007 intake) who were designing a hybrid system for a house somewhere in Germany. It was only because of the great PPRE alumni email list that I heard about it. Naturally I am also part of the PPRE family having done my EUREC core semester in Oldenburg. Lucky me!

It turns out this house is not connected to the grid, which often elicits signs of disbelief from people. Many, Germans especially, can’t believe there are still houses in Germany which are not yet connected to the grid. Well this one isn’t and that’s the way the owner, Uta Reese, likes it!

Thanks to a chance meeting in early 2009 between Manfred Amoureux and Uta’s daughter Oda, a process was begun that would eventually culminate, in July of the same year, in bringing a little bit of light to a 400 year old wooden house in the Southern Schwarzwald mountains near Freiburg. And all of this was done by a bunch of super keen renewable energy greenhorns with loads of theory backing and not much practical renewable energy experience!

Manfred, being the very able fellow that he is, proceeded to draw a group of people around himself to assist with what turned out to be a rather amazing experience for us all. Despite the team members being spread across the world, it was possible to pull the design together using modern telecommunication tools (read Skype) and other standard software packages (read OpenOffice). With the research done and the design complete, Manfred proceeded to purchase the bulk of the required supplies which included everything from wiring through to the SureSine 300W inverter. The generators, namely the two Marlec Rutland 913 wind turbines and the photovoltaic panels, were already in place from a previous system which was no longer functioning. The storage was four refurbished forklift batteries supplied by an acquaintance of Uta’s. We were able to reuse some of the existing wiring but the rest of the components had to be bought new. Thanks to Manfred we ended up being very well prepared.

The plan was to all gather in Kassel, hop into Manfred’s car on Friday afternoon on 17 July 2009 and head down to Häusleberg Farm for a single weekend to complete the whole job. We knew this was a rather optimistic goal! Tyler Goepfert and Craig Wong came from Oldenburg, Manfred from Witzenhausen and me from Kassel. Unfortunately Damien Puigserver and Jean Baptiste Brette, although heavily involved in the design of the system, were unable to attend the weekend away. We arrived after dark to a warm meal prepared by Seguna and Uta Reese followed by some preparatory work before hitting the sack at about 1am.

The hayloft is a great place to sleep!

The next morning we were all up and at ‘em around 08h30. It was all systems go. Each of us chose a task to do. We had to check out the two wind turbines, sort out the solar panels, test the batteries, do the wiring and a bunch of other stuff. We had to be slick and I think we all worked very well together.

All our preconceptions of working with tools requiring electricity were seriously challenged. This was probably the first time for most of us to not have a plug socket in which to plug in a power drill or soldering iron. It’s a real mind bender not having access to the grid while working and one quickly comes to appreciate the convenience us first world people have in the form of electricity on tap. So any drilling had to be done with battery powered drills which didn’t have sufficient charge for the whole weekend! Na ja! Note for next time: take more batteries!!! If we really needed power we did have access to a small petrol generator but mostly we just had to improvise.

After a full day on Saturday and most of Sunday we were rather proud of ourselves to be able to supply the family with two compact fluorescent lights and a plug point for charging mobile phones and laptops.

From left to right. Craig Wong, Uta Reese, Baby Reese, Roy Emmerich, Seguna Reese, Manfred Amoureux, Tyler Goepfert

Despite the lack of sleep, the long hours spent clinging to the top of a high mast, the teetering on the top of a ladder in the pouring rain and trying to connect wires in the pitch dark with a head torch with nearly empty batteries, we all learnt a lot about hybrid systems, how to improvise and that we still have a lot to learn! For me, the best parts were the practical application of my theoretical knowledge, the camaraderie and the great organic food.

Above all it was a lot of fun! I can’t wait for phase 2 this summer!

If you are interested in more technical information please feel free to browse the project website here.

Posthumous Posts

Over the next while I will be adding a few posts about my EUREC Masters experiences that I haven’t had the time to upload yet. These will focus mostly on the Kassel specialisation and on the continuing saga surrounding my open letter of complaint. Give me a little while longer to get creative…

It’s All Over!

On the steps near The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium looking out toward the Grand-Place

Two days ago I delivered my final presentation in Brussels and I am now a Master in renewable energy! As I write this post I am still in Brussels watching the first snow of the season begin to fall outside.

It is a great relief to have completed all the requirements for the course but it is with a tinge of sadness that I say goodbye to my newfound friends and prepare to move on to the next stage.

Overall it has been a truly amazing experience. I’ve met so many interesting people and have seen so many interesting things.

The presentations took place at www.eurocities.eu. It was a very suitable venue for the occasion and everything progressed smoothly. I would like to thank the EUREC Agency for organising a fitting finale.

For those of you interested in my presentation you may download it below:

• Final presentation (pdf – 1.9 MB)
• Associated animation (avi – 4.9 MB)

Some people asked me how I created the documents above. Once again I relied 100% on open source software to do the job. Below is a list of the software used:

• Presentation – Openoffice
• Picture editing – The Gimp
• Graphs – the python plotting library matplotlib
• Animation – a combination of python and matplotlib. I modified the following example script.

While in Brussels I stayed with an amazing couple that I got to know through the www.couchsurfing.org network. You should really check it out. It’s the only way to travel.

Oh and one last tip. Upon your arrival in Brussels you should head to the Brussels Info Place for free maps of the city and some very cool and free audio visual displays. I now know a lot more about how the EU was created. So thank you to Brussels for another interesting experience.

The Dissertation is Done!!!

The last five and a half months at Fraunhofer IWES (formerly ISET) in Kassel have been a wonderful time of learning for me. I want to say a big thanks to Dr. Martin Braun for giving me the opportunity to “try out” the very exciting field of…..well it’s actually quite a few fields to be precise. Distributed energy generation, distributed energy management systems and ancillary services (i.e. voltage/frequency control). Every day there was something new to get my head around. Some days too much…

I also want to say thanks to the rest of the support staff and students in the group. Rodrigo, Christin, Kathrin, Stefan, David, Mareike, Felix, Thomas, Loreto, Ming…..you were all great! The chocolates for my birthday were a special treat!

So what did I actually do? I’m going to throw you into the deep end here. Go read for yourself:

• Summary paper (386 KB)
• Full version (3.1 MB)

Okay I will attempt to offer a layman’s version of my work. Basically I wrote some software in Python which is able to control a few small scale electricity generators and loads. I just concentrated on being able to control active power but it is easily extendible to include reactive power too.

Then the funky thing. My software is able to connect these units in a tree structure to any depth you like. Pretty much the same as the folders in your file manager on your computer. But instead of folders, my connection nodes are called agents. Instead of files in the folders I have generators or loads. Get the picture?

So what’s the big deal you may say? Well our electricity systems are a bit behind the times as they only cater for those huge fossil fuelled dinosaurs and those other things which produce radioactive waste that nobody quite knows what to do with. To play the electricity generating game you have to follow some rules. For example, to partake in the secondary control regulating power market in Germany you have to have a minimum of 10 MW at your disposal. This is no small amount of active power and is all the more difficult (actually impossible mostly) for small scale distributed generators to produce. So why not aggregate them (aggregating being just a fancy word for adding them all together)? And that is exactly what I do.

But then why the need for the unlimited depth of this tree structure? Well the idea is to be as flexible as possible. You may end up with Mrs. Sparks owning a few small scale solar photovoltaic power plants and a single wind turbine. She doesn’t have sufficient capacity to trade on the European Energy Exchange by herself so she needs to team up with somebody else. Her generators are located behind an aggregator which makes them look like a single power plant. A larger industry player then signs a deal with Mrs. Sparks to add her to a larger pool of renewable energy generators. All of these already aggregated generators (and loads and storage devices like electric vehicles) are then further aggregated to reach the generating capacity required by the market.

I really enjoy this sector of the renewable energy industry because it is a nice combination of my computing skills with a dash of hardware interaction. Very much a system overview while keeping well away from semi-conductor physics! If I’m lucky enough to stay in this field I can see myself figuring out new ways to slice, dice and combine renewable energy generators with the end goal of powering the grid with 100% renewable energy. Now isn’t that a worthy goal?!

And in my spare time I plan on reading the following freely downloadable books:

1. Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester Brown
2. Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air by David MacKay

But for now it’s forward march to Brussels….

Open Letter of Complaint to the EUREC Steering Committee

The deed has now been done. Last night I sent off the final version of my open letter of complaint to the EUREC Steering Committee. Suffice to say it didn’t take 5 minutes to compose. It needed two drafts over a 5 month period before I was reasonably happy with the result. It’s still not perfect but I just had to send it. I tried my best to be constructive in every way.

So why did I take this task so seriously you may ask?

I see my relationship with EUREC similar to that between a restaurant owner and a patron. When you pay very good money, you expect an excellent plate of food. For 11000 of my hard earned Euros I expected a lot more.

Let’s just say that in the university environment there is often little incentive to become better, to improve and to strive. For some lecturers, delivering material last edited 6 years ago is okay. Well I don’t think it is. But let me say too that I’ve met some amazing administrators and lecturers during my time in Germany. To these I say thank you and I encourage you to become even better still.

I see it as my duty to inform all prospective EUREC students what they are letting themselves in for. We’re all adults. Read my letter for yourself and make up your own mind. If I were you I wouldn’t stop at the EUREC masters programme when researching RE masters degrees. Look wider. In the navigation bar on the side I’m busy adding a list of links to other renewable energy masters programmes around the world. If you choose carefully you could just get the tuition for free! But don’t let that be the deciding factor. It’s good tuition, challenging practicals and a wide ranging exposure to industry that you want. And at the end of the day if you want to go on to do a PhD that should be possible too.

Good luck with your choice!

Kasseler Symposium

For the last day and a half I’ve been attending the 14th Kasseler Symposium on Energy Systems Technology at the University of Kassel in Kassel, Germany (if you were in any doubt!). This year the focus was on wind energy systems.

I’ve come away from the event feeling inspired by all the presentations and have the pervading feeling that powering our grids with 100% renewable energy is no longer a dream but a distinct reality.

Unlike most other conferences, if you are a student participation is free. So I’d encourage you, if you’re in the area, to make the effort to attend next year when the topic E-Mobility will be explored from the 23-24 September 2010. You can register online. Look under “Termine & Veranstaltungen” on the German version or under “Dates and Events” on the English version of the site.

Brewing something…

So I haven’t posted in AGES and most people think this blog is dead. I have my reasons as to why this is so. Soon you will discover why I’ve been silent so long. I will shortly publish an open letter of complaint aimed at EUREC. I’m just trying to get my dissertation going and am refining the letter a little more before releasing it to the world. So sit tight and watch this space.

Oh and I will probably write a post about my experiences in Kassel sometime too.

123 EEG

It’s been a while since my last post. See my previous posts why this is so.

Many people from South Africa ask me how Germany has become so successful in the field of renewable energy. What did they do that is different to the rest?  It can all be attributed to the Erneuebare Energien Gesetz  or EEG for short. In English this stands for The Renewable Energy Sources Act.

The concept is simple which is why it has been successful:

1. Everybody has a legal right to connect to the electricity grid.
2. Anybody is allowed to produce renewable electricity and feed it into the grid, regardless of the size of installation.
3. The price paid to the power producer is competitive and guaranteed for a period of 20 years.

There is a very nice summary of the EEG produced by the German federal government. You can download it here:

EEG, The Renewable Energy Sources Act – The success story of sustainable policies for Germany

Thankfully we still have some politicians in South Africa who have a servant heart. At the end of March 2009 the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff (REFIT) will be finalised. From what I have read it is similar to the German EEG. Let’s hope it’s not a misfit!

— Begin update 23.02.2010 —

I’m afraid it’s an “Oh dear!” day for renewable energy in South Africa when somebody like Eddie O’Connor says things like, “Eskom does not want renewables. They do not want competition.”

Read the full article here.

I mean this isn’t anything we didn’t know already, it’s just that I thought we were further down the road with the move to renewables in South Africa than we obviously are. It’s been almost a year since the first African REFIT was announced. NERSA has already been through two iterations of the pricing structure and list of included technologies, whipping up a frenzy of excitement in the renewable energy industry. Despite all the hype they forgot the most important part of the REFIT namely the power purchase agreement which spells out the details of who can connect to the grid, how and who pays for what part of the connection. It was supposed to have been completed in November 2009 but so far nothing more than a draft has materialised.

— End update 23.02.2010 —