Solar PV training unit installed at University of Cyprus
The University of Cyprus added a computer-controlled solar photovoltaic training unit to its renewable energy lab, giving mechanical engineering students a complete, instrumented PV system to measure and analyse, not just a panel to look at.
It lets students run repeatable photovoltaic experiments indoors, capture the data digitally, and learn to read how a real solar installation behaves. Read below for what the unit teaches and the skills students take from it, or browse the product listing and request a quotation for your own lab.
Challenge
Solar theory does not prepare students for real installations
Cyprus runs on solar more than any other country in Europe — around 93% of households heat their water from rooftop collectors, the highest rate in the EU. Graduates from its engineering programmes go straight into a market where photovoltaic and solar systems are everyday infrastructure, not emerging technology. They need to understand how a panel actually performs, not just the theory of how it should.
That understanding is hard to build from lectures alone. Photovoltaic output changes with irradiance, temperature, load and orientation, and those relationships are easiest to grasp when a student can change one variable and watch the numbers move. Outdoor panels make this almost impossible to teach reliably: the weather will not cooperate with a timetable, conditions never repeat, and you cannot isolate one factor at a time.
The Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering needed a way to teach photovoltaics with the rigour its students, and its own solar research group, work to: controlled, repeatable, measurable. A demonstration model that simply lights up was not enough. The department wanted a working PV system students could instrument, load, vary and analyse, producing real datasets they could take away and interpret.
Solution
A complete, instrumented PV system students can measure
The EDIBON Computer Controlled Photovoltaic Solar Energy Unit (EESFC) reproduces a full photovoltaic installation on a single bench, under conditions the instructor controls. A built-in solar simulator of powerful lamps replaces the sky, so the same experiment can be run on any day and repeated exactly, the basis for teaching cause and effect rather than one-off observation.
Crucially, it is not just a panel. The unit includes the components of a real PV system, so students see the whole energy chain from light to stored, usable power:
- Photovoltaic panels with a lamp-based solar simulator and ventilation
- DC load module, battery, charge regulator and auxiliary battery charger
- Sensors for temperature, light radiation, DC current and DC voltage
- EDIBON SCADA control system; interface box, data-acquisition board and software for live control, logging and analysis
Because the unit is computer-controlled, every reading is captured digitally in real time. Students do not copy a meter into a notebook; they work with logged datasets, the same way a practising engineer or a researcher would. The unit is also designed for class teaching, it can be projected or shown on a whiteboard so a whole group can follow a live experiment, and it can be networked with other EDIBON units as the lab grows.
What students actually do with it
The unit supports a structured set of practical exercises that move students from basic principles to system-level analysis:
- Measure how solar panels convert light into electricity, and quantify panel efficiency
- Study how the angle and orientation of the panel to the light source change output
- Examine the relationship between irradiance, temperature and the power delivered
- Work with the DC load and battery circuit to understand storage, charging and real demand
- Calibrate sensors and verify measurement accuracy before taking readings — a discipline in itself
- Build a full energy balance of the system, from incoming radiation to usable DC output
Results
Graduates who can work with real solar systems
With the unit installed and the teaching staff trained on it, the department can now teach photovoltaics as a measured, hands-on subject. The outcomes it is built to deliver:
- Concepts that stick: abstract relationships (efficiency, irradiance, temperature dependence) become tangible when students change a variable and see the result in the data.
- Real engineering practice: students work with live instrumentation, digital data acquisition and sensor calibration, the everyday tools of a working energy engineer.
- Job-ready skills for a solar economy: in a country where solar is mainstream infrastructure, graduates leave able to assess, instrument and analyse PV system performance rather than only describe it.
- A bridge to research: the same unit supports applied research and project work, connecting undergraduate teaching to the department's active solar energy research.
The result is a renewable energy lab that teaches photovoltaic engineering the way the field is actually practised; with live, measured data, in the one country in Europe best placed to put those graduates to work.
Conclusion
A photovoltaic panel on a roof is easy to point at. Teaching an engineer to understand why it performs the way it does is harder, and it is what employers and research groups actually need. By equipping its lab with a fully instrumented, computer-controlled solar PV unit, the University of Cyprus gave its students a system they can measure, vary and analyse; turning solar energy from a topic they read about into one they can engineer. Edquip and Edibon supplied the unit, coordinated delivery, and arranged on-site installation and training, with a five-year warranty behind it.
