AC 2007-2019: USING MATHCAD TO ENHANCE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE WIND ENERGY TOPIC IN AN ALTERNATE ENERGY SOURCES COURSE

The use of Mathcad to enhance the classroom presentation and extend the level of a meaningful quantitative experience for wind energy systems in an alternate energy systems survey course is explored. Because of time constraints, less than two weeks of class time is available for wind energy. One of the instructional goals for wind energy systems is to present a meaningful quantitative experience for the topic. By utilizing Mathcad and developing a worksheet centered about the Weibull distribution as particularized to wind energy metrics, the quantitative experience has been extended to the evaluation of system performance—a significant and useful enhancement. The use of Mathcad to enhance the quantitative coverage of wind energy systems was a success.