The project comes at a time when many south-east Asian countries are undergoing rapid industrial revolution and industrialisation processes. This results in an increasing demand for energy, particularly electricity. Sourcing a cheap, safe and reliable electricity supply is central to further economic development.

Higher education institutions are expected to produce technical staff, engineers, experts and tutors which will able to design, maintain and further develop advanced technical solutions, as well as to train other staff resources like technicians and managers, who will be up to the job and ready to effectively and efficiently adopted and use modern power technologies.

Currently, the subjects which are central to help build modern power engineers are not available from the project’s partner universities, and the content of current classes and the delivery mechanism does not meet students' expectations and challenges related to the transformation of the power sector.

The consortium of seven European and Asian partners has won total project funding of almost €1 million under the competitive Erasmus+ Key Action 2 call. The College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan team has been awarded €153,187 in funding from the Erasmus+ programme to ultimately support universities in Bhutan, Nepal and Indonesia.

College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan academics will work with three partner universities – Lodz University of Technology in Poland, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and University of the West of Scotland (UWS) in Scotland– to produce undergraduate programmes focussing on smart power systems.

eACCESS project consortium:

Partner Name	Name of the Partner Institute	Country
P1	University of Lodz	Poland
P2	University of the West of Scotland	United Kingdom
P3	Aristotle University of Thessaloniki	Greece
P4	Kantipur Engineering College	Nepal
P5	Pokhara University	Nepal
P6	Royal University of Bhutan	Bhutan
P7	Atma Jaya Catholic University	Indonesia
P8	Soegijapranata Catholic University	Indonesia

The European partner, Lodz will act as project coordinator, Aristotle as Smart Power Systems Engineering curriculum and programme developer, and UWS as the researchers and developers of the eACCESS online teaching and learning platform. The other Asia partners are responsible to implement the developed course module in the respective university.

 

eACCESS project will fill knowledge and skill deficit in the area of modern power system of the identified countries through knowledge dissemination, skill development and capacity building. These countries are facing challenges in supporting power and energy requirements due to lack of leadership, knowledge and facilities to develop skill personal in this region. eACCESS will mainly target this challenges and offer required solutions through collaboration with local universities for enabling capacity building in Higher Education Sector.

The implementation of the eACCESS project will also benefit local energy companies, which will gain access to new, well-educated engineering staff, will be able to undertake research cooperation with local universities in the implementation of new solutions and the application of new technologies in power engineering.

 

College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan academics Asst Prof Roshan Chhetri, Dr. Tshewang Lhendup, Mr Manoj Sharma, Mr Cheku Dorji, Mr Namgay Tenzin, will play the major role for the project management and implementation. College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan will focus on the modernization of power system related course module of Bachelor of Electrical Engineering.

Along with course module development and implementation, CST will organize the life long Learning (LLL) module for power system professionals. The undergraduate is not only designed to cover advanced topics in the subject area; they are designed to be delivered through the best possible means, so that they can be effectively accessed by students, staff and wider society. The consortium together, will develop supporting teaching tools including the eACCESS teaching platform at project institutions, establishment of new teaching methods and the dissemination and exploitation of the knowledge and skills concerning smart power grid and remote teaching systems.

The following are the key staff involved in the project activities for the successful implementation of the project: