Bridge Project Education-Economy

This project is cooperation between Power-Link, the energy knowledge platform of Ghent University, RTC West-Flanders (Regional Technological Center) and vzw Horizon Educatief. The goal is to present the applications of the electrical grid in a simple and interactive way to students, the workforce of tomorrow. The project is in line with the goals of the STEM-action plan (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) of the Flemish government, addressing the shortage of engineers, scientists and technicians on the labor market.

The project familiarizes the youth with complicated electrical grids. During the interactive workshop students learn with the aid of a detailed model representing the electrical grid in simplified form. In the transition to a sustainable energy provision decentralized energy systems are crucial. The existing electricity infrastructure as we know it will have to be transformed to a ‘smart grid’.

These ‘intelligent energy networks’ simplify the integration of decentralized energy production, mostly based on renewable energy sources such as sun, wind or cogeneration, and the corresponding bidirectional movement of electricity (from the producer to the consumer and vice versa).

During the workshop students are introduced to the basic principles of the electrical grid and are stimulated to use the theory in practice during the interactive challenges. The workshop is organized for students of the third grade of technical secondary education and teachers active in West-Flanders can register their class since October 2014.
Together with RTC West-Flanders and the NPO Horizon Educatief, Power-Link wants to encourage young people from both technical and scientific fields of study to start a technical education and/or career. There is indeed lots of potential for job creation in the green energy sector, especially jobs requiring technical competencies.

Partners

• Ghent University, Power-Link
• RTC West-Vlaanderen
• Horizon Educatief

Further information

The project has a budget of 84.280,00 € for the period October 2013 – August 2015.

Note on the Strategic Plan STEM 2012-2020 & the Nieuw Industrieel Beleid (New Industrial Policy):

Through inquiry-based learning projects, partnerships between schools and the business world, aiming to stimulate the entrepreneurship of the youth (from nursery school to university), are supported. The focus is on awareness-raising projects and teaching skills to stimulate entrepreneurship. The Flemish Government works on an integrated action plan for the stimulation of careers in mathematics, exact sciences and engineering: the Strategic Plan STEM 2012-2020. This plan is part of the actions in the white paper New Industrial Policy. These inquiry-based learning projects on economy-education 2013 are an important response to this challenges.