A look back at the C-BEAR+ Summer School 2019

Organized jointly by the RLI and the Chair of Economic and Infrastructure Policy (WIP) at the TU Berlin, the first summer school on “Sustainable energy access and renewable energy” took place from 5-17 August 2019 as part of the California-Berlin Research and Exchange Plus (C-BEAR+) program sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

A total of twenty committed students from the fields of engineering sciences, economics and politics from various universities in the USA and Germany took part in the two-week program. UC Berkeley, Arizona State University, UC San Diego, John Hopkins, Fairbank Alaska and Kentucky University were represented from the USA. From Germany, the students came from the University of Passau, the TU Munich, the University of Kassel, the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, the University of Siegen and the TU Berlin.

In the first week, the focus was on interactive workshops in which the participants were given an insight into the various methods of electrification planning in countries of the global South. The workshop series consisted of:

Workshop I: Open Source and Open Software in the energy research context (Ludwig Hülk, RLI & Jens Weibezahn, TU Berlin)

Workshop II: Modelling and design of RE systems (Jens Weibezahn & Karlo Hainsch, TU Berlin)

Workshop III: Energy demand and willingness to pay – Household surveys in developing countries (Prof. Dr. Jörg Peters, RWI Essen & Setu Pelz, RLI)

Workshop IV: Geoinformation system (GIS) tools in the electrification context (Catherina Cader, RLI)

Workshop V: How to conceptualize a start-up (Georg Heinemann, TU Berlin and SolarworX)

Workshop VI: How to conceptualize a scientific paper (Prof. Dr. Christian v. Hirschhausen, TU Berlin)

In the second week, the students worked intensively in groups of 2-4 on creating research concepts. On the last day of the summer school, these were presented and discussed in the form of 7-minute short presentations by a jury of representatives from business, science and politics. The aim is to maintain the developed cooperation even after the end of the summer school and to implement and publish joint scientific work.

Topics were:

Optimizing off-grid systems
Start-Up: Tenant services
Energy access and Gender
Diesel Swarm / Solar Home Systems and diesel gensets in Nigeria
P2P
Islands as testbed for RE innovations

The Group also visited the Agora Energiewende think tank, the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and the SolarworX start-up. They were guided through Siemensstadt and Potsdam, went on an underground tour, got to know Berlin by bicycle and climbed the Reichstag dome.

The RLI would like to thank all participants for their exciting contributions! Below you will find a selection of photos. We are looking forward to holding the next summer school as part of the C-BEAR+ programme: Next summer we are going to the USA.