The University of La Laguna (ULL) is hosting the classroom part of a BIP course on smart grids and blockchain in energy from 26 to 30 May, promoted within the European alliance of academic institutions STARS EU, which has been coordinated by the lecturer from the Department of Industrial Engineering, Benjamín González. For this reason, fifteen students have travelled to the School of Engineering and Technology, where the course is being held, mainly from master’s degrees from three partner universities of the alliance: the Crakow University of Technology (Poland), Hochschule Bremen – City University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the Bragança Polytechnic University (Portugal), in addition to the local students enrolled.
The director of the Internationalisation Secretariat of ULL, Judit Mendoza, was in charge of welcoming the new students, inviting them to enjoy the experience at all levels and to take advantage of the opportunity to exchange ideas to broaden their knowledge. Also present at the opening were two teachers from the Portuguese institution, Ângela Ferreira, who was the initiator of this course which in 2025 reaches its second edition, and José Lima.
Ferreira herself explained that ‘smart grids’ are electrical infrastructures with a high degree of digitalisation capable of supporting real-time operations and of combining monitoring and automatic control actions to help preserve the integrity of the systems. «They are very important today, as we have seen with the recent blackout. So the idea of this course is to explore tools to understand, design, operate and optimise modern electrical systems that integrate digital technology, communication and renewable energy sources.»
During his first intervention, Ferreira made a first round in which the students introduced themselves and their personal and academic interests. At this point, she was very satisfied with the fact that a third of the students attending were female, an encouraging indicator given the scarce presence of women in the so-called STEM degrees.
Benjamín González introduced the contents of these face-to-face sessions, which will run until Thursday 29th May, and which will include a visit to the premises of the Technological Institute of Renewable Energies (ITER); a visit to the host school’s laboratories; the presentation of initiatives such as the European project on energy communities Satcomm and the technical masters of the University of La Laguna; and the development of a collaborative work in groups by the students, which will later be presented in common.
The theme of this Blended Intensive Courses (BIP) is integrated into one of the thematic interest groups (TIG) that articulate the activity of STARS EU, in this case the Energy Transition, which is led by the University of La Laguna, with Benjamín González as coordinator.
