Integration of a wind power assessment project throughout the undergraduate curriculum

In the summer of 2005, simultaneous with the initial admission of a freshman class to a new general engineering program at the Polytechnic campus, ASU entered into an agreement with the Hopi nation in northern Arizona to assess the potential for development of wind energy resources on Hopi land. This provided a unique opportunity to involve students at the freshmen level in a problem based learning experience as they received one credit for assisting with the initial phase of the project, which included the erection of a 50 meter instrumentation tower on the reservation. At this point (January 2007) approximately ten month's worth of data has been obtained, and the analysis of this data is proceeding. Consequently, since the analysis of wind data requires substantially more technical maturity than that which was required for the first phase, there is another opportunity to involve students, but this time at the sophomore level. In this paper, the ongoing problem based learning experience based on the Hopi wind assessment project at ASU Polytechnic is described. The series of annual time scales necessary to complete wind power assessment and development projects serendipitously coincide with academic time scales. In addition, if the data indicates that wind power development is economically and environmentally feasible on the Hopi reservation, the project will have entered the development phase as these students approach graduation. As a result, simultaneous with increasing levels of engineering ability, these students have the opportunity to be involved in an applied research and development effort at correspondingly increasing levels of technical responsibility throughout their undergraduate experience.