Renewable Energy Learning Lab

RELab

Imagine a world where students, willing to carry out research experiments on renewable energy, find a place within the Aalto University campus in Espoo, Finland which fulfil their wishes. Imagine a world where students are already confident enough to tackle real-world energy-related problems. Imagine a lab space inside Aalto University campus itself where students can get to learn and satiate their curiosity regarding renewable energy, in particular, and energy conversion, in general. 

Welcome to Renewable Energy Learning Lab, or RELab in short, which is a full-scale research laboratory. The lab houses various renewable energy instruments, such as bifacial solar panels, unifacial solar panels, horizontal wind turbine and vertical wind turbine. Besides these main instruments, the lab also contains solar meter, industrial fan (which serves as the artificial source of wind), environment meter and multimeters for aiding the research activities of students and researchers alike.

The RELab was borne out of one of the projects from Product Development Project at Aalto University. The first version of the lab was built (and was also the final product delivered) by the students who participated in this course between Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters. Professor Mika Järvinen, who now leads the Energy Conversion and Systems research group at Department of Mechanical Engineering inside the School of Engineering at Aalto University, is the main contact person for this lab.