Students of the Degree in Electronic Engineering visit the new Medium Voltage Laboratory of Mondragon Unibertsitatea

Students of the Degree in Electronic Engineering visit the new Medium Voltage Laboratory of Mondragon Unibertsitatea

The new 600 m2 medium voltage laboratory will become a benchmark in Europe in the transformation and improvement of the wind energy sector.

---

The engineering students who study at Mondragon Unibertsitatea are closely linked to the industrial reality. This is achieved thanks to the strategy of the Polytechnic School to integrate within the academic activities initiatives such as alternating study-work, visits to companies, talks by company professionals in the classrooms, development of multidisciplinary semester projects in workshops and laboratories, etc. One of these special activities is precisely the one that the students of the Degree in Industrial Electronic Engineering had at the end of May: a visit to the new medium voltage laboratory.

Manex Barrenetexea and Enrique Sagredo, teachers-researchers of the university have shown the laboratory to the students of 2nd and 3rd year of Industrial Electronic Engineering, a laboratory where a European research project is developed in collaboration with companies such as Siemens Gamesa, Infineon and SGB-SMIT. The researchers have explained the functioning of the different areas of the laboratory, the equipment available, the research objective of the facility... These innovation projects that the research staff develops in collaboration with companies create a very suitable ecosystem for engineering students to combine their studies with paid internships and put into practice everything they have learned in the classroom.

According to the latest Lanbide report, published in December 2021, the graduates of the Degree in Electronic Engineering of Mondragon Unibertsitatea have an employment rate of 95%. According to the same report, 39% of graduates say that the university environment has been the main channel to access their first job, showing that the strategy of Mondragon Unibertsitatea to build collaborative networks with companies pays off.

The laboratory

The first medium voltage laboratory of Mondragon Unibertsitatea was put into operation in 2006 but it has been in 2023 when it has been reopened after a major expansion. This transformation has been carried out thanks to the FASTAP consortium involving leading companies such as Siemens Gamesa, Infineon and SGB-SMIT and has been supported by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 program. The new laboratory located in Arrasate-Mondragon is unique and singular in Europe.

The equipment installed in the medium voltage laboratory has been designed to optimize the electrical capacities of wind turbines through technologies that increase annual energy production by up to 5% and reduce the cost of wind energy leverage by 5.5%. The new equipment makes it possible to carry out the various tests aimed at improving the wind energy sector. In fact, the installed equipment has the capacity to test rotating machines of up to 8MW of rated power and will be able to validate 20kV medium voltage grid codes.

The laboratory has a surface area of 600 square meters divided into several areas:

• 10MW test area
• 4MW test area
• Transformer area
• Container area

At present, the laboratory's research activity is exclusively geared to the needs of Siemens Gamesa, Infineon and SGB-SMIT. In the future, however, other companies will also be able to make use of the facilities and test their medium-voltage equipment there.