Cutting-Edge technological infrastructure

Cutting-Edge technological infrastructure

“Learning by doing” is one of the main axes of the educational model of Mondragon University. For this, students must have at their disposal adequate technical resources, not only to be able to materialise what they have learnt in the classroom, but also so that they can internalise on their own what is not possible to teach in the classroom. The Orona Ideo Campus guarantees these possibilities to students of the Energy Engineering Course. The infrastructures and resources at your disposal include mikroSarea laboratory and the District Heating infrastructure, which are available to the Campus.

In the mikroSarea laboratory, they can implement smart management systems for a building or a home, combining renewable energy sources and the electricity grid. The energy produced by the photovoltaic panels and wind mills installed on campus is transported directly to the mikroSarea laboratory for students to use them in their practices and projects. The challenges that are addressed in the mikroSarea laboratory, both by researchers at the university and by the students include, among others, the adaptation, transformation, and/or storage of renewable energy. To test the operation of the solutions developed by the students, the mikroSarea laboratory also has household appliances to simulate the zero-energy house of the future..

The head office of the campus is the giant Orona Ideo Innovation City laboratory. Combining different types of energy solutions, it responds to the needs of all agents that develop their activity there (Orona, Ikerlan, Mondragon University), always under criteria of efficiency and sustainability. Solar thermal and photovoltaic energy, geothermal energy, biomass boilers and absorption refrigeration are combined to meet, as efficiently as possible, the heating, air conditioning and power supply needs of Orona Ideo. We could argue that the Orona Ideo campus is a real-scale laboratory or energy demonstrator; a unique and privileged space for the training of the students of the Energy Engineering Course.