Volker Quaschning

Professor Volker Quaschning has roughly 25 years to go until he retires, and the way he sees it, that might just be enough time to achieve his ultimate goal of transferring our entire energy supply to 100 percent renewable energies. Quaschning is a professor in the Department of Regenerative Energy Systems at Berlin’s HTW University of Applied Sciences, where he specializes in the simulation of such energy systems.

“We’re using computers to create future scenarios.”

How much electricity does a new solar facility generate? What mixture of wind and solar energy is most expedient? How much storage capacity is required to use energy in the most optimal way? Is nuclear energy required in the long-term to generate enough electricity? Professor Quaschning and his team are working to find answers to all of these questions with the goal of developing scenarios for a climate-neutral energy supply. “We’re using computers to build future scenarios, as it were,” explains Professor Quaschning. “Together with students, of course.”

Joint Projects with Students

DESIRE is the name of the project that a team of professors and students are working on under the direction of Professor Quaschning. The abbreviation stands for “Dynamisch erweiterbare Simulationsumgebung für regenerative Energiesysteme” (Dynamic Expandable Simulation Environments for Regenerative Energy Systems). Quaschning has another pet project, as well: living EQUIA. This is a solar house that was developed and built jointly by students at three Berlin universities. At the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe international competition in Madrid, the team and the solar house placed first in the category of solar technology. The project lasted a total of two years and Professor Quaschning was one of the main advisors.

Work for the German Aerospace Center in Spain

Berlin’s HTW is the only university of applied science in the city with professorships devoted entirely to regenerative energies. And this was a good reason for Volker Quaschning to answer a call to teach there starting in 2004. He received his doctorate at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he studied the structures of a climate-friendly energy supply. After that, he worked for five years as a project manager for solar systems analysis at the Spanish office of the German Aerospace Center.

Cooperation with the Solar Industry In and Around Berlin

At this point, the German capital became hard to resist: “Berlin’s reputation in the field of regenerative energies is outstanding and can continue to be so in the future,” argues Professor Quaschning. “All the leading minds are here, and the proximity to political decision-makers makes the city equally exciting.” In Berlin, Quaschning and his colleagues profit not only from cooperation partners in science, such as the Helmholtz Center Berlin for Materials and Energy, but also from cooperation with solar companies in the immediate vicinity. There are roughly 340,000 jobs now in Germany in the field of renewable energies, many of them in Berlin and Brandenburg.

“The sector has matured considerably,” notes Quaschning. It is constantly growing and requires a steady flow of qualified employees. And yet there remains one special motivation that Quaschning notes in his students: “They are enthusiastic.” The idea of doing something meaningful and of contributing to saving the climate is ever-present – just as it is with Professor Quaschning.