In its master’s degree programme Sustainable Renewable Energy Technologies, the University of Oldenburg collaborates closely with partner universities in Ghana and Colombia. Working together in a living lab, students are planning and testing ways to supply remote communities with renewable energy.
Getting to the Solunagua Centre for Sustainability and Peace in the north-west of Colombia is no walk in the park. Despite its location just a hundred or so kilometres east of the provincial capital Medellín it takes a good while to get there. After almost three hours on increasingly narrow and winding roads, you reach the village of San Rafael in the central Andes, then drive another eight kilometres along an unpaved track. The last stretch is on foot, through densely forested hills. After another quarter of an hour, you finally reach your destination. Around 115 families live in Solunagua, many of them part of a grassroots democratic community established by the non-governmental organisation Change the World Colombia with the goal of becoming a model village for sustainable development.
Teachers and students from the University of Oldenburg’s Sustainable Renewable Energy Technologies (SuRE) programme are also involved in making this plan a reality. “Over the past four years, in various courses, seminars and workshops our students have explored the technical options for Solunagua’s energy supply, looking at what is feasible and also how receptive the residents are to different solutions,” explains Dr Herena Torio, the programme’s coordinator. A special feature of the project is that for the past year not only Oldenburg students but also students from the University of Antioquia (UdeA) in Medellín and the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Sunyani, Ghana, have been participating in the various elements of the programme, which are now hybrid, taking place both online and in person.
In Solunagua, sustainable technologies can be evaluated under real-world conditions.
This intercontinental collaboration is part of the SEEDexchange (Sustainable Energy Education – Developing Exchange between continents) project launched in 2024 and funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which is providing around 400,000 euros over four years. The Solunagua community functions as a living lab – a real-world environment where innovative technologies and sustainability concepts can be tested and evaluated under real-world conditions. The goal is to work with members of the community to find ways to implement renewable energy technologies in remote settlements. “The four partner institutions complement each other perfectly,” explains Torio. While the University of Oldenburg provides the fundamental scientific knowledge for energy systems and a research-based teaching and learning concept, the UENR in Ghana has expertise in the area of politics and economics, and Colombia’s UdeA provides an engineering perspective, with a focus on hydropower. The NGO Change the World Colombia plays a key role in practical implementation and participatory processes.
Torio is convinced: “Today’s students need a broad, holistic perspective to be able to solve the complex technical and social challenges that integrating renewable energies into the power supplies of rural communities in the Global South entails.” To ensure that participating students benefit as much as possible from the three universities’ different areas of expertise, in addition to joint study modules the project will incorporate practical experiments that can be carried out remotely. “For example, we are currently adapting a lab experiment on wind energy so that it can be controlled and the results evaluated via the Internet,” explains Dr Tanja Behrendt, a lecturer in the SuRE master’s degree programme. The University of Antioquia is contributing with an experiment in its area of expertise, hydropower.
The third component of the project is annual workshops held at the three partner universities on a rotating basis. After the participants met in Oldenburg for the kick-off event in 2024, the 2025 workshop was held in Ghana. With around 50 participants, it included excursions that focused on the country’s energy supply network as well as an alumni seminar, also funded by the DAAD. In a two-day hackathon under the motto “Open Energy Modelling”, students from the three universities worked in mixed groups with 15 alumni from Oldenburg’s SuRE programme and other DAAD programmes to develop solutions for the region’s energy issues.
Can agriculture and solar energy be combined?
The teams were given various tasks such as planning an “agri-photovoltaic” project in which an area used for both agriculture and energy production is created, or analysing the feasibility of nuclear power on the African continent. “The networking between the current students with their up-to-date knowledge, and the alumni, who bring a wealth of experience from a wide range of fields, went down well on both sides,” says Behrendt.
The Oldenburg master’s programme in renewable energy was established in 1987 under the name Postgraduate Programme Renewable Energy (PPRE). “There is now an extensive and very active alumni network,” explains Torio. More than 500 students from around 85 countries have completed the programme, and like the current students, most of them come from countries in the Global South.
Next year, the in-person workshop will take place in Colombia. The Solunagua living lab will then enter the practical phase, with the installation of photovoltaic systems, battery storage units and a small hydroelectric turbine, partly financed by project funds. The operating data from these systems will be accessible online. “This is a great opportunity for the students: they can use this data to learn how to compare models with data or how to present the data in a clear and concise manner, for example,” explains Andreas Günther, a lecturer in the SuRE master’s programme.
Great enrichment for the programme
Even though the exchange between students and teachers located in Oldenburg, Medellín and Sunyani poses certain challenges due to time differences, variations in curricula and semester schedules, and unstable internet connections, Torio, Behrendt and Günther all agree that collaboration across three continents has greatly enriched the programme. “Thanks to SEEDexchange, for the first time we can establish a long-term collaboration with two partner universities from which the entire cohort of students in our SuRE master's programme benefits," notes Torio. She and her colleagues have already applied for further funding to consolidate and develop the collaboration.
