SuRE and EMRE students welcome to Oldenburg includes the Annual Wind Excursion. 

The past two weeks have been busy for the new ’23 – ’25 batch of SuRE and EMRE incoming students. The students have been attending non-stop information sessions, laboratories, and welcome events hosted by the PPRE team and University’s International Office. On Friday, October 13, the students took a trip before the semester begins to see and experience a bit of the technologies they will work with over the next two years.

The rainy morning started with a visit to an old wind mill in Spetzerfehn, constructed in 1886 and maintained by the same family for the last 5 decades. Students were able to explore the mill and see how the inner gears worked. The next stop on the trip was a visit to ENERCON, Germany’s biggest manufacturer of wind energy converters. Students were given a tour of the manufacturing and quality assurance spaces, conversing with each other and our guides as to understanding the technology’s past and present. The day wasn’t over yet as the tour concluded and students packed back into the bus to head towards the Holtriem Wind Farm, a tourist turbine located on a wind farm which houses a transformer station, grid connection, and 35 turbines. Students climbed into the turbine on this windy day, but the views were worth it! After a lunch by the shore and students navigating their first menu in German, the students geared up for their visit to the Hooksiel biogas farm. In addition to being a fully-operating dairy farm, this farm boasts a second purpose as an energy farm. Students were given a tour of the land where the relationship between wind turbines, solar, biogas, as well as cattle was explained.

Text by: Margo Stokebrand.