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Due to the economic inefficiency of material recycling of general industrial waste and urban waste, the use of solid recovered fuels (SRFs) not only mitigates the environmental loadings from waste incineration plants and sanitary landfills but also creates green electricity and/or heat and thus reduces the use of fossil fuels. In this regard, the Taiwan government formulated the "Solid Recovered Fuel Manufacturing Guidelines and Quality Standards" in 2020 to ensure the manufacturing quality of SRFs. This paper focused on the status of waste management and energy supply, the current regulations for adopting SRFs, and the challenges in the development of SRFs from the viewpoints (or life cycle) of the environmental, economic, and engineering (or technological) characters in Taiwan. Based on the database of the official handbook/yearbook, the energy supply from indigenous biomass and waste was 1678.7 × 103 kiloliters of oil equivalent (KLOE) in 2021, which only accounted for about 1.2% of the total energy supply. Obviously, available indigenous biomass and waste for producing SRFs were mostly from waste wood, sugarcane bagasse, and mixtures containing wood/paper. Finally, some suggestions for the increasing use of SRFs in the energy and industrial sectors were addressed to keep in step with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2030, especially in the mitigation of GHG emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the principal research query and whether strategic foresight deployed by entrepreneurial firms in energy transition aims at crafting future readiness. Design/methodology/approach: With a focus on entrepreneurial firms working in the alternative energy segment in the Indian context, the intent is to examine the deployment of strategic foresight by incumbent firms and their entrepreneurial journey. The authors have adopted the approach of Eisenhardt for this research. The area of interest for the authors entailing strategic foresight by entrepreneurial firms in energy transition aligns with defining features reflecting the aim of Eisenhardt method for this exploratory research coupled with constructivism. Findings: While the future scenarios in the energy sector have to be necessarily multiple, their alignment with different geographic, economic, demographic and political outlooks shall be defined by the pathways niched through the deployment of strategic foresight for arriving at those scenarios. Research limitations/implications: Strategic foresight deployed by entrepreneurial firms has the potential to create future readiness through self-reliant sustainable economic value chains for local populace, thus propagating holistic development in remote regions. Originality/value: This paper attempts to knit together the domains of strategic foresight, entrepreneurial firms and energy transition through case research and present the future thinking deployed for navigation in uncharted pathways by capturing the foresight component of these incumbent firms chosen through careful case selection. The narrative has been strengthened by the varied interviews across participants and the observations made by the authors during the research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development (SD) can indicate the direction of the development of modern organizations' transition and transformation strategies in the energy sector. Currently, in most countries, the main challenge for the energy sector's strategies is to deal with energy security. The implementation of SD induces changes both in strategy and technology. The strategies are based on the technological transition toward renewable energy sources (RES). The aim of this paper is to explore business management literature dedicated to the transformation and transition strategies in the energy sector. The adopted methods are a systematic literature review (SLR) accompanied by a classical literature review (CLR) in Scopus database exploration. A literature review is developed in VOSviewer software and keyword co-occurrences analysis allowed to identify the main changes of direction in energy sector transformation strategies. The literature was explored by the 26 queries which resulted with 11 bibliometric maps. The analysis of the bibliometric maps was a challenge due to the cross-disciplinary strategic directions of development presented in indexed publications in the Scopus database. The identification of the changes in energy sector strategies is important because of its reliance on depleting resources and natural environment degradation. As a result of this paper, there is a visible shift of the trend in explored scientific publication from not only technological-based solutions but also towards managerial and organizational practices to achieve sustainability in the energy sector. This paper, besides the results, presents the theoretical contribution and managerial recommendations for business practices and addresses future research avenues. There are discussed implications of the presented analysis for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper uses scientometric indicators to examine the Li-ion battery research in India as reflected through Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) data of 32 years (1989-2020). India produced 2864 publications during the period but the publication activity increased manifold during the last decade. The output was scattered among 1346 institutions. However, 28 institutions produced 1% or more of the total output. One third (34.5%) of the output emerged out of international collaboration. About 71.5% of the output were in journals with impact factor >=2. The paper also identifies the aspects/direction of research through keyword analysis besides identifying preferred journals and prolific authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the prospect to institute the inter-state hydrogen energy system on selected countries in Asia-Pacific region, through individual evaluation from the nexus of technology, social and economy perspectives, and further utilizing the respective strengths to identify the inter-state hydrogen network strategy in Asia-Pacific region, or 'Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Valley'. Domestic energy self-sufficiency based on the existing energy sources produced nationally is also considered in the review. In looking into the prospective of hydrogen energy system adoption, four indicators are set based on domestic energy capacity, national wealth, society development and research and development (R&D), which are generalized according to the population size of the country. Countries of assessment are Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. This study reveals that nations with active hydrogen policies and high R&D capacity could lead the strategy, while countries with high capacity in primary energy supply and economy advantage would benefit the group in catering the energy and commercial resources, respectively. Social acceptance is another critical aspect, as countries with high social security index could potentially reduce the risk of public rebuttal against the energy system transformation. This paper also extensively discusses the existing energy profile, policies and strategies of each country, which become the basis in potential identification of the country to adopt the new hydrogen energy system in the future. • This study characterizes nation's role in potential inter-state hydrogen network. • Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand may lead the inter-state hydrogen network. • Singapore and Brunei Darussalam hold potential as key players in capital resources. • Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia are amongst the potential energy suppliers. • Low-tariffs countries are enticing for hydrogen infrastructures institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the World Energy Investment 2018 report, the global annual investment in renewable energy exceeded USD 200 billion for eight consecutive years until 2017. In this paper, a deep-learning-based time-series prediction method, namely a gated recurrent unit (GRU)-based prediction method, is proposed to predict energy generation in Taiwan. Data on thermal power (coal, oil, and gas power), renewable energy (conventional hydropower, solar power, and wind power), pumped hydropower, and nuclear power generation for 1991 to 2020 were obtained from the Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, and the Taiwan Power Company. The proposed GRU-based method was compared with six common forecasting methods: autoregressive integrated moving average, exponential smoothing (ETS), Holt–Winters ETS, support vector regression (SVR), whale-optimization-algorithm-based SVR, and long short-term memory. Among the methods compared, the proposed method had the lowest mean absolute percentage error and root mean square error and thus the highest accuracy. Government agencies and power companies in Taiwan can use the predictions of accurate energy forecasting models as references to formulate energy policies and design plans for the development of alternative energy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is widely used in maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of photovoltaic (PV) energy systems. Nevertheless, this technique suffers from two main problems in the case of partial shading conditions (PSCs). The first problem is that PSO is a time invariant optimization technique that cannot follow the dynamic global peak (GP) under time variant shading patterns (SPs) and sticks to the first GP that occurs at the beginning. This problem can be solved by dispersing the PSO particles using two new techniques introduced in this paper. The two new proposed PSO re-initialization techniques are to disperse the particles upon the SP changes and the other one is upon a predefined time (PDT). The second problem is regarding the high oscillations around steady state, which can be solved by using fuzzy logic controller (FLC) to fine-tune the output power and voltage from the PV system. The new contribution of this paper is the hybrid PSO-FLC with two PSO particles dispersing techniques that is able to solve the two previous mentioned problems effectively and improve the performance of the PV system in both normal and PSCs. A detailed list of comparisons between hybrid PSO-FLC and original PSO using the two proposed methodologies are achieved. The results prove the superior performance of hybrid PSO-FLC compared to PSO in terms of efficiency, accuracy, oscillations reduction around steady state and soft tuning of the GP tracked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samples of bleached kraft pine cellulosic pulp, either treated with an enzyme preparation (a Thermomyces lanuginosus xylanase, an Aspergillus sp. cellulase, and a multienzyme preparation NS-22086 containing both these activities) or untreated, were refined in a laboratory PFI mill. The treatment with cellulases contained in the last two preparations significantly improved the pulp’s susceptibility to refining (the target freeness value of 30°SR was achieved in a significantly shorter time), increased water retention value (WRV) and fines contents while the weighted average fiber length was significantly reduced. These changes of pulp parameters caused deterioration of paper strength properties. The treatment with the xylanase, which partially hydrolyzed xylan, small amounts of which are associated with cellulose fibers, only slightly loosened the structure of fibers. These subtle changes positively affected the susceptibility of the pulp to refining (refining energy was significantly reduced) and improved the static strength properties of paper. Thus, the treatment of kraft pulps with xylanases may lead to substantial savings of refining energy without negative effects on paper characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several network features and information retrieval methods have been proposed to elucidate the structure of citation networks and to detect important nodes. However, it is difficult to retrieve information related to trends in an academic field and to detect cutting-edge areas from the citation network. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that detects the trend as the growth direction of a citation network using network representation learning(NRL). We presume that the linear growth of citation network in latent space obtained by NRL is the result of the iterative edge additional process of a citation network. On APS datasets and papers of some domains of the Web of Science, we confirm the existence of trends by observing that an academic field grows in a specific direction linearly in latent space. Next, we calculate each node’s degree of trend-following as an indicator called the intrinsic publication year (IPY). As a result, there is a correlation between the indicator and the number of future citations. Furthermore, a word frequently used in the abstracts of cutting-edge papers (high-IPY paper) is likely to be used often in future publications. These results confirm the validity of the detected trend for predicting citation network growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated hybrid optimization algorithm for training the radial basis function neural network (RBF NN). Training of neural networks is still a challenging exercise in machine learning domain. Traditional training algorithms in general suffer and trap in local optima and lead to premature convergence, which makes them ineffective when applied for datasets with diverse features. Training algorithms based on evolutionary computations are becoming popular due to their robust nature in overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional algorithms. Accordingly, this paper proposes a hybrid training procedure with differential search (DS) algorithm functionally integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO). To surmount the local trapping of the search procedure, a new population initialization scheme is proposed using Logistic chaotic sequence, which enhances the population diversity and aid the search capability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RBF hybrid training algorithm, experimental analysis on publicly available 7 benchmark datasets are performed. Subsequently, experiments were conducted on a practical application case for wind speed prediction to expound the superiority of the proposed RBF training algorithm in terms of prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as “sufficiency”) and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens’ heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials—that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens’ heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design and fabrication of energy storage systems (ESS) is of great importance to the sustainable development of human society. Great efforts have been made by India to build better energy storage systems. ESS, such as supercapacitors and batteries are the key elements for energy structure evolution. These devices have attracted enormous attention due to their potential applications in future electric vehicles, smart electric grids, etc. This paper first addresses the fundamental principles, structure and classification of supercapacitors and batteries, and then focus on the recent advances on these devices made by India especially from Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), a scientific society under the ministry of electronics and information technology, government of India. Also the current global market scenario and market in India are also discussed in detail to recognize the most appropriate energy systems for the emerging economy like India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the use of heat generated during a chemical reaction as an alternative source of environmental energy. Exothermic reaction heat in the presence of light chemical elements have been studied. The heat of these reactions is summed up by the heat of combustion of hydrogen. Therefore, the effectiveness of alternative energy sources increases significantly. Electrochemical and mixed (electrochemical + carbo-thermal) methods have been developed to restore the starting components from the reaction products. The energy efficiencies of the electrochemical and mixed methods were calculated giving (without using the heat of exothermic reaction heat) 47.4% and 74%, respectively, whereas using the heat of exothermic reactions, energy efficiency is 82% and 99%, respectively. In general, for 1 kg of magnesium in the five-step electrochemical process 21012 kJ of heat are released, 165 g of hydrogen and one cubic meter of oxygen are formed. The mixed method produces 247 g of hydrogen and 21065 kJ of heat. • The 5-step cyclic chemical methods for hydrogen production have been developed. • Investigation allows one to control and increase the energy efficiency of H 2 production. • Heat of 247 g H 2 + heat of chemical reactions exceeds heat of 1 kg any fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albania has historically been known to have an active but challenging drilling activity that demands the most innovative technology to develop, predominantly, medium-heavy oil reservoirs. Although recent efforts have been made by the government to stimulate and expand the largest onshore European oilfield, technical and economical obstacles are prevalent. These obstacles make it difficult to fully develop reliable and profitable hydrocarbon bearing zones in a downturn economy, especially since Albanian oil can be costly to produce and refine. Due to these typical issues that affect many local energy sectors, many developed countries diversify their energy production to avoid strict dependency on crude oil. An emblematic and modern option that is extensively gaining popularity in Europe focuses on renewable energy from sophisticated recycling programs. Although Albania is a relatively "green" country when it pertains to its electricity production (97% hydropower and 3% fossil fuels), it has yet to develop energy-recycling programs that it can salvage for self-sustainable energy sources. The past years have seen a conscious revitalization and stimulation in the mentality of green economy in Albania. But, in comparison to the rest of "western Europe" that are leading world examples in efficient recycling, it is significantly lagging with initial strides just now focusing on aligning national legislations with current EU models. Furthermore, two crucial reasons that should motivate Albania to investigate new applications for energy recycling are: (1) alternatives to crude oil and petroleum products that can be supplemental and provide stable access to fossil fuels; (2) industrial and municipal recycling via waste management to reprocess waste and produce industrial raw material-spawning the emergence of a "circular economy" to develop the backbone needed to strengthen the industrial and manufacturing markets for a self-sustaining economy. Accordingly, in this paper, the topic that will be addressed, given the recent decrease in oil & gas prices, focuses on the Albanian energy sector's capability to sustain and develop a supplementary recycling program via "waste-to-fuel" (WTF) technology (biofuels and/or inorganic waste). With the intent that it could function cooperatively with Albania's active drilling program to mitigate dependency on a single fuel source and produce enough fossil fuel in an effective and sustainable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In power systems, energy storage effectively improves the reliability of the system and smooths out the fluctuations of intermittent energy. However, the installed capacity value of energy storage cannot effectively measure the contribution of energy storage to the generator adequacy of power systems. To achieve a variety of purposes, several control strategies may be utilized in energy storage systems. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different energy storage control strategies on the generation adequacy. This paper presents the capacity value of energy storage to quantitatively estimate the contribution of energy storage on the generation adequacy. Four different control strategies are considered in the experimental method to study the capacity value of energy storage. Finally, the analysis of the influence factors on the capacity value under different control strategies is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging smart metering solutions to support energy efficiency on the individual household level poses novel research challenges in monitoring usage and providing accurate load forecasting. Forecasting electricity usage is an especially important component that can provide intelligence to smart meters. In this paper, we propose an enhanced approach for load forecasting at the household level. The impacts of residents’ daily activities and appliance usages on the power consumption of the entire household are incorporated to improve the accuracy of the forecasting model. The contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) we addressed short-term electricity load forecasting for 24 hours ahead, not on the aggregate but on the individual household level, which fits into the Residential Power Load Forecasting (RPLF) methods; (2) for the forecasting, we utilized a household specific dataset of behaviors that influence power consumption, which was derived using segmentation and sequence mining algorithms; and (3) an extensive load forecasting study using different forecasting algorithms enhanced by the household activity patterns was undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are increasingly using sustainability reports to inform their stakeholders and the public about their sustainability practices. We apply topic modelling to 9,514 sustainability reports published between 1999 and 2015 in order to identify common topics and, thus, the most common practices described in these reports. In particular, we identify forty-two topics that reflect sustainability and focus on the coverage and trends of economic, environmental, and social sustainability topics. Among the first to analyse such a large amount of data on organizations’ sustainability reporting, the paper serves as an example of how to apply natural language processing as a strategy of inquiry in sustainability research. The paper also derives from the data analysis ten propositions for future research and practice that are of immediate value for organizations and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Unexpected performance degradation occurs in wind turbine blades due to leading edge defect when suffering from continuous impacts with rain drops, hails, insects, or solid particles during its operation life. To assess this issue, this paper numerically investigates the steady and dynamic stall characteristics of an S809 airfoil with various leading edge defects. More leading edge defect sizes and much closer to practical parameters are investigated in the paper. Methodology: Numerical computation is conducted using the SST k-ω turbulence model, and the method has been validated by comparison with existed published data. In order to ensure the calculation convergence, the residuals for the continuity equation are set to be less than 10−7 and 10−6 in steady state and dynamic stall cases. The simulations are conducted with the software ANSYS Fluent 13.0. Results: It is found that the characteristics of aerodynamic coefficients and flow fields are sensitive to leading edge defect both in steady and dynamic conditions. For airfoils with the defect thickness of 6%tc, leading edge defect has a relative small influence on the aerodynamics of S809 airfoil. For other investigated defect thicknesses, leading edge defect has much greater influence on the flow field structures, pressure coefficients and aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil at relative small defect lengths. For example, the lift coefficients decrease and drag coefficients increase sharply after the appearance of leading edge defect. However, the aerodynamic characteristics could reach a constant value when the defect length is large enough. The flow field, pressure coefficient distribution and aerodynamic coefficients do not change a lot when the defect lengths reach to 0.5%c,1%c, 2%c and 3%c with defect thicknesses of 6%tc, 12%tc,18%tc and 25%tc, respectively. In addition, the results also show that the critical defect length/thickness ratio is 0.5, beyond which the aerodynamic characteristics nearly remain unchanged. In dynamic stall, leading edge defect imposes a greater influence on the aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil than steady conditions. By increasing in defect length, it is found that the separated area becomes more intense and moves forward along the suction surface. Conclusions: Leading edge defect has significant influence on the aerodynamic and flow characteristics of the airfoil, which will reach a stable status with enough large defect size. The leading edge separation bubble, circulation in the defect cavity and intense tailing edge vortex are the main features of flow around defective airfoils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste-to-Energy technology is a promising approach, that should help to mitigate risk of energy crisis and to overcome problem with increasing waste generation. The European union actively promotes energy recovery from waste in its policies and limits landfilling of utilizable waste. These legally induced changes substantially affect municipalities: waste treatment becomes more expensive and complex. To react to these up-coming complications, it is beneficial to create municipal unions, focused on the cooperation in waste management operations. Such municipal unions help to lower waste treatment costs and to optimize waste collection. This paper applies general cooperative game theory approach to study how municipalities cooperate within regions of intermediate urban-rural type. Novel distributed dynamic coalition formation algorithm is used to describe process of unions' creation. Moreover, on the basis of sampling Shapley value, suitable financial transfers within unions are proposed. The paper also presents a review of current applications of game theory to energetics, validates proposed method using the Czech Republic interregional case study and discusses the conducted sensitivity analysis. Results suggest the most suitable municipal unions for adaptation to new waste treatment legislative and demonstrate that through cooperation municipalities are able to save up to 8% of waste treatment costs. • Municipalities save on waste-to-energy treatment through cooperation. • Waste treatment is defined as a cooperative game between municipalities. • Distributed coalition formation reveals optimal municipal unions to create. • The novel algorithm handles coalition formation in large subadditive games. • Sampling Shapley value suggests fair costs distribution within resulting unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the coordination control of a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) and an inductive fault current limiter (FCL), this paper proposes an efficient low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) scheme for a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) based wind turbine. The DVR is located to the DFIG’s stator circuit for stabilizing the terminal voltage and decreasing the generator current. The inductive FCL is connected to the DFIG’s rotor circuit for suppressing the rotor overcurrent and protecting the converter. Theoretical discussions on structure, principle and scale criterion of the combined DVR-FCL are conducted, and simulation analyses of the proposed approach to handle symmetrical and asymmetrical faults are done in MATLAB/Simulink. In this study, the dynamic characteristics of the DFIG during the faults are analyzed from multiple aspects, and a detailed comparison of the proposed approach and the single action of DVR or FCL is carried out. From the simulation results, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach are well demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using abandoned gas wells as geothermal resources for energy production is an effective way to extract geothermal energy from geological formations. These abandoned wells have the potential to significantly contribute in the rising global demand for energy without requiring the land disruption resulting from deep drilling or digging, processes necessary for energy extraction from geological formations via more traditional methods. In this paper, a method to extract geothermal energy from abandoned gas wells is proposed. The method offers an efficient, economical, and environmentally-conscious way to generate electricity. A mathematical model of a thermal and hydraulic coupling process is constructed, and a 3D numerical model is generated to study the process of geothermal energy extraction by retrofitting an abandoned gas reservoir into a geothermal reservoir. Using the model, heat extraction and fluid flow are analyzed over a period of 50 years. The heat production, electricity generation, and thermal recovery over the lifetime of the reservoir indicate that a commercially viable geothermal dual well system can produce geothermal energy effectively. Dual-well systems contain at least one injection well and one production well. They are composed of a two-way flow system in which the fluid flows into the reservoir via an injection well and returns from the production well having absorbed thermal energy from the surrounding rocks. Sensitivity analysis of the main parameters controlling the average outlet temperature of the fluid from the sedimentary geothermal system reveals that abandoned gas wells are a suitable source of geothermal energy. This energy can be harvested via a method whose use of reservoir fluids differs from that of the traditional method of closed-loop circulation via a borehole heat exchanger. Here, it is demonstrated that abandoned oil and gas fields can be repurposed to be geothermal energy sources that provide low-cost electricity and are economically sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) are ad-hoc networks which are deployed at rivers, seas and oceans to explore and monitor the phenomena such as pollution control, seismic activities and petroleum mining etc. The sensor nodes of UWSNs have limited charging capabilities. UWSNs networks are generally operated under two deployment mechanisms i.e localization and non-localization based. However, in both the mechanisms, balanced energy utilization is a challenging issue. Inefficient usage of energy significantly affects stability period, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, path loss and throughput of a network. To efficiently utilize and harvest energy, this paper present a novel scheme called EH-ARCUN (Energy Harvesting Analytical approach towards Reliability with Cooperation for UWSNs) based on cooperation with energy harvesting. The scheme employs Amplify-and-Forward (AF) technique at relay nodes for data forwarding and Fixed Combining Ratio (FCR) technique at destination node to select accurate signal. The proposed technique selects relay nodes among its neighbor nodes based on harvested energy level. Most cooperation-based UWSN routing techniques do not exhibit energy harvesting mechanism at the relay nodes. EH-ARCUN deploys piezoelectric energy harvesting at relay nodes to improve the working capabilities of sensors in UWSNs. The proposed scheme is an extension of our previously implemented routing scheme called ARCUN for UWSNs. Performance of the proposed scheme is compared with ARCUN and RACE (Reliability and Adaptive Cooperation for efficient Underwater sensor Networks) schemes in term of stability period, packet delivery ratio, network throughput and path loss. Extensive simulation results show that EH-ARCUN performs better than both previous schemes in terms of the considered parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sustainable Energy Development Authority of Malaysia (SEDA) regularly receives complaints about damaged components and distribution boards of PV systems due to lightning strikes. Permanent and momentary interruptions of distribution circuits may also occur from the disturbance. In this paper, a solar PV Rooftop system (3.91 kWp) provided by SEDA was modelled in the PSCAD/EMTDC. The Heidler function was used as a lightning current waveform model to analyse the transient current and voltage at two different points susceptible to the influence of lightning events such as different lightning current wave shape, standard lightning current and non-standard lightning current. This study examines the effect on the system components when lightning directly strikes at two different points of the installation. The two points lie between the inverter and the solar PV array and between inverter and grid. Exceptionally high current and voltage due to the direct lightning strike on a certain point of a PV Rooftop system was also studied. The result of this case study is observed with and without the inclusion of surge protective devices (SPDs). The parameters used were 31 kA of peak current, 10 metres cable length and lightning impulse current wave shape of 8/20μs. The high current and voltage at P1 striking point were 31 kA and 2397 kV, respectively. As for the AC part, the current and voltage values were found to be 5.97 kA and 5392 kV, respectively.Therefore, SPDs with suitable rating provided by SEDA were deployed. Results showed that high transient current voltage is expected to clamp sharply at the values of 1.915 kV and 0 A at the P1 striking point. As for the AC part, the current and voltage values were found to be 0 kA and 0.751 V, respectively. Varying lightning impulse current wave shapes at striking point P2 showed that the highest voltage was obtained at waveshape 10/350 μs at 11277 kV followed by wave shapes of 2/70 μs, 8/20 μs and 0.7/6 μs. The high value of transient voltage was clamped at a lower level of 2.029 kV. Different lightning amplitudes were also applied, ranging from 2–200 kA selected based on the CIGRE distribution. It showed that the current and voltage at P1 and P2 were directly proportional. Therefore, the SPD will be designed at an acceptable rating and proper position of SPD installation at solar PV Rooftop will be proposed. The results obtained in this study can then be utilised to appropriately assign a SPD to protect the PV systems that are connected to the grid. Installing SPDs without considering the needs of lightning protection zones would expose the expensive equipment to potential damage even though the proper energy coordination of SPDs is in place. As such, the simulation results provide a basis for controlling the impacts of direct lightning strikes on electrical equipment and power grids and thus justify SPD coordination to ensure the reliability of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical energy can be harvested from the living plants as a new potential renewable energy source. Characterization of the electrical signal is needed to enable an optimum energy harvesting setup condition. In the present paper, an investigation is conducted to analyze the characteristic of Aloe Barbadensis Miller (Aloe Vera) leaves in terms of electrical energy generation under specific experimental setups. The experimental results show that 1111.55uW electrical power can be harvested from the Aloe Vera with 24 pairs of electrodes and this energy is capable to be stored in a capacitor. This energy has a high potential to be used to power up a low power consumption device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of large renewable energy projects is characterized by the great uncertainties associated with their administrative complexity and their constructive characteristics. For proper management, it is necessary to undertake a thorough project risk assessment prior to construction. The work presented in this paper is based on a hierarchical risk structure identified by a group of experts, from which a Probabilistic Fuzzy Sets with Analysis Hierarchy Process (PFSAHP) was applied. This probabilistic analysis approach used expert opinion based on the Monte Carlo Method that allows for extracting more information from the original data. In addition, the coherence of the experts’ opinions is assessed using a novel parameter known as Confidence Level, which allows for adjusting the opinions of experts and weighting their judgments regarding impact and probability according to their coherence. This model has the advantage of offering a risk analysis in the early stages of the management of renewable energy projects in which there is no detailed information. This model is also more accurate than the classic fuzzy methodology when working with complete distribution functions, whilst it avoids the loss of information that results from the traditional mathematical operations with Fuzzy numbers. To test the model, it was applied to a 250 MW photovoltaic solar plant construction project located in southeast of Spain (Region of Murcia). As a result of the application of the proposed method, risk rankings are obtained with respect to the cost, the time, the scope and from a general point of view of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, high step-up dc-dc converters have been drawn substantial attention because of their wide-ranging application not only in the renewable energy sector but also in many other applications. To acquire a high voltage gain in photovoltaic (PV) and other renewable energy applications, a high step-up dc-dc converter is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter structure consists of a full-bridge (FB) module along with an input boost inductor and a voltage multiplier based on the Cockcroft-Walton (CW) principle with a parallel inductor. The key features of the proposed converter are: 1) high voltage gain with lower voltage stress on the switches, diodes and other passive elements without affecting the number of cascaded stages, 2) a minimum size of boost inductance and cascaded stage capacitance that ensures its compactness and low cost, and 3) a minimal number of major components. Circuit operation, steady-state analysis and various design parameters of the proposed converter are explained in details. In order to prove the performance of the theoretical analysis, a laboratory prototype is also implemented. The peak voltage gain and the maximum efficiency obtained are 11.9 and 94.6% respectively with very low input current ripple and output voltage ripple generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compact UHF antenna has been presented in this paper for nanosatellite space mission. A square ground plane with slotted rectangular radiating element have been used. Coaxial probe feeding is used to excite. The rectangular slot of the radiating patch is responsible for resonating at lower UHF bands. One of the square faces of the nanosatellite structure works as the ground plane for the slotted radiating element. The fabricated prototype of the proposed antenna has achieved an impedance bandwidth (S11< -10dB) of 7.0 MHz (398 MHz– 405 MHz) with small size of 97 mm× 90 mm radiating element. The overall ground plane size is 100 mm × 100 mm × 0.5 mm. The proposed antenna has achieved a gain of 1.18 dB with total efficiency of 62.5%. The proposed antenna addresses two design challenges of nanosatellite antenna, (a) assurance of the placement of solar panel beneath the radiating element; (b) providing about 50% open space for solar irradiance to pass onto the solar panel, enabling the solar panel to achieve up to 93.95% of power under of normal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power demands are set to increase by two-fold within the current century and a high fraction of that demand should be met by carbon free sources. Among the renewable energies, solar energy is among the fastest growing; therefore, a comprehensive and accurate design methodology for solar systems and how they interact with the local environment is vital. This paper addresses the environmental effects of solar panels on an unirrigated pasture that often experiences water stress. Changes to the microclimatology, soil moisture, water usage, and biomass productivity due to the presence of solar panels were quantified. The goal of this study was to show that the impacts of these factors should be considered in designing the solar farms to take advantage of potential net gains in agricultural and power production. Microclimatological stations were placed in the Rabbit Hills agrivoltaic solar arrays, located in Oregon State campus, two years after the solar array was installed. Soil moisture was quantified using neutron probe readings. Significant differences in mean air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and soil moisture were observed. Areas under PV solar panels maintained higher soil moisture throughout the period of observation. A significant increase in late season biomass was also observed for areas under the PV panels (90% more biomass), and areas under PV panels were significantly more water efficient (328% more efficient). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new European model stipulates the achievement of an inclusive, sustainable and intelligent economic growth. Increasing the share of renewable energy is one of the factors that improve the quality of economic growth, similar to research, development and investment in human capital. In this paper we tested the correlation between economic growth and renewable energy consumption for ten European Union (EU) member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the period 1990–2014, using Auto-regressive and Distributed Lag (ARDL) modeling procedure, a technique that captures causal relationships both on a short run and on a long run. The short run perspective reveals the transition towards a new energy paradigm, while the long run approach corresponds to the long-term equilibrium of the analyzed factors. Our results shows that, in the short run, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Renewable Energy Consumption (REC) dynamics are independent in Romania and Bulgaria, while in Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia an increasing renewable energy consumption improves the economic growth. The hypothesis of bi-directional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth is validated in the long run for both the whole group of analyzed countries as well as in the case of seven CEE states which were studied individually. These results allow us to look into the feasibility of the Europe 2020 goals regarding the increase of energy efficiency and to propose public policies to achieve these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the performance and emission analyses of a turbo-charged diesel engine fuelled with pre-mixed and post-mixed hybrid biodiesel blends at varying load condition thereby maintaining injection timing, injection pressure and speed constant at 23 0 bTDC, 220 bar and 1500 RPM. The experimental result depicted that post-mixed biodiesel blends (POBD 20) showed higher brake specific energy consumption and exhaust gas temperature by 4.6% and 2.02% than that of diesel while brake thermal efficiency was reduced by 5.68%. However, engine overall performance of post-mixed biodiesel blends (POBD 20) was found to be comparable with diesel and other prepared test fuel blends. Similarly, comparing exhaust emissions, oxides of nitrogen and carbon dioxide were on its higher side by 2.64% and 2.43% than normal diesel fuel. On the contrary, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon and smoke opacity for POBD 20 were found to be 36.87%, 51.5% and 23.2% lower than conventional diesel fuel. From the above study, it is finally concluded that POBD 20 blend may be used as an alternative optional fuel that can substitute present diesel fuel without much engine modification and exhaust related problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an interface system based on the Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter for Photovoltaic (PV) arrays. Two control strategies are proposed for the DAB converter to harvest the maximum power from the PV array. The first strategy is based on a simple PI controller to regulate the terminal PV voltage through the phase shift angle of the DAB converter. The Perturb and Observe (P&O) Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique is utilized to set the reference of the PV terminal voltage. The second strategy presented in this paper employs the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to directly set the phase shift angle of the DAB converter that results in harvesting maximum power. This feed-forward strategy overcomes the stability issues of the feedback strategy. The proposed PV interface systems are modeled and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK and the EMTDC/PSCAD software packages. The simulation results reveal accurate and fast response of the proposed systems. The dynamic performance of the proposed feed-forward strategy outdoes that of the feedback strategy in terms of accuracy and response time. Moreover, an experimental prototype is built to test and validate the proposed PV interface system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an optimal sizing algorithm for a hybrid renewable energy system using smart grid load management application based on the available generation. This algorithm aims to maximize the system energy production and meet the load demand with minimum cost and highest reliability. This system is formed by photovoltaic array, wind turbines, storage batteries, and diesel generator as a backup source of energy. Demand profile shaping as one of the smart grid applications is introduced in this paper using load shifting-based load priority. Particle swarm optimization is used in this algorithm to determine the optimum size of the system components. The results obtained from this algorithm are compared with those from the iterative optimization technique to assess the adequacy of the proposed algorithm. The study in this paper is performed in some of the remote areas in Saudi Arabia and can be expanded to any similar regions around the world. Numerous valuable results are extracted from this study that could help researchers and decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study is based on comprehensive cross sectional data set collected through field survey from all the four major provinces of Pakistan i.e. Punjab, Sindh, KPK and Balochitan. In total 950 farmers were interviewed. This paper attempts to examine the factors that influence farmers׳ choice of water pumps (e.g. electric, diesel, solar photovoltaic (PV) or biogas), and to assess the impact of these water pumps on crop productivity, household income, and poverty. The paper uses the multivariate probit model and propensity score matching approach in order to achieve these objectives. The empirical results indicate that educated, younger, and wealthier farmers are more likely to adopt alternate energy-based water pumps for irrigation. Access to credit facilities and frequent hours of load shedding are key factors influencing a farmer׳s decision to adopt alternative energy-based water pumps rather than relying on electricity. Alternative energy sources have positive and significant impacts on the productivity of wheat, rice and maize crops and on household income. The use of alternative energy sources for water pumping has resulted in the reduction of poverty in the range of 11–20%. The study has important policy implications. The current energy crisis in Pakistan has adversely affected farming operations and in turn crop yield, and the use of water pumps for irrigation based on alternative energy sources has increased crop productivity. Access to these renewable energy technologies for water pumping should be encouraged through subsidies and easy availability of credit facilities, as the majority of farmers in Pakistan are resource-poor with small landholdings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doped ceramics materials structure can be controlled using different synergetic effects as well as consolidation parameters. Additives concentration influence on ceramics microstructure and dielectric properties, based on fractal geometry, is analyzed. These properties level control level is very important in advanced materials prognosis. The Coble's two-sphere model is used as initial one, for developing a new two-ellipsoid model; unlike the spherical geometry, the ellipsoidal-polyhedral geometry,besides better approximation of sintering particles, is in relation with consolidation parameters (sintering time and temperature). The experiments have been based on BaTiO3 with different additives (CeO2, MnCO3, Bi2O3, Fe2O3, Nb2O 5, CaZr2O3, Er2O3, Yb2O3, Ho2O3), concentration from 0.01wt% to 1wt%, consolidated under the pressing pressure up to 150 MPa and 1180°C-1380°C sintering temperatures, are used. We performed SEM and EDS analysis. The fractal nature offers a new approach for the ceramics structure analysis, describing, prognosis and modeling the grains shape and relations between ceramics structure and electric-dielectric properties. The microstructure has a great importance from different alternative energies points of view. World's interest race in renewable and new generation energy sources development, especially the new batteries systems, are in research and development focus, simultaneously, in the electric cars technologies development. Beside the electrochemical processes and rechargeable speed, the storage capacity has special significance which is enriched by the fractal natureanalysis and these scientific paper contributions with some fundamental electrochemical laws through fractal corrections expressed by the relevant formulas. These are the new frontiers in direction of electrochemical fractal microelectronics. Also, the wind energy as new and alternative energy source has important role growing. The land and obstacles of fractal nature, influence on air/wind turbulence towards the wind generators propellers, has special effect on the wind speed, described by the logarithmic law equation which is deduced from the similarity theory that is strictly applicable to steady-state horizontally homogeneous conditions in the surface layer. So, definitely in this paper the fractal nature independently existing everywhere within the structures, contact surfaces, practically, from microstructures, even on nano level up to global bulk and massive shapes, fractal nature ceramics materials existence is completely confirmed within the electrochemical thermodynamic and fluid dynamics parameters, are confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a controversy over a proposed wind farm on Big Spring Mountain in Ashe County, North Carolina, as a politics of scale. The proposal sparked community conflict over the environmental impacts of the proposed wind farm. In the aftermath of the failed proposal, efforts continue to foster support for community based renewable energy projects. The paper draws upon and extends scholarship on the politics of scale, linking scale frames with spaces of dependence and engagement to examine the dynamics of this conflict and its relationship to broader tensions within the electric system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spacecrafts need to maneuver their solar panels towards the sun and antennas towards the ground station for maximum solar power harvesting and communication with the ground station. For tracking purpose, usually magnetorquer rods, reaction wheels and permanent magnets are used, but they are heavier, expensive, and occupy extra space on the spacecraft. Keeping in mind the dimension, budget and mass constraints of small satellites, a system compatible with small satellite is worth consideration. Consequently, this paper focuses on designing and analyzing a solar panel module with embedded Air-Coil. Such an Air-Coil is an innovative idea for the replacement of heavier, bulky and expensive attitude control systems. The proposed Air-Coil is integrated in the internal layers of an eight layers solar panel PCB module. Complete degradation analyses of the solar panel have been done to ensure that it will meet the satellite power requirements at BOL (beginning of life) and EOL (end of life). The proposed embedded Air-Coil has been analyzed for the generated magnetic moment, resultant torque, power consumption and temperature increase of the complete solar panel unit. A steady state thermal model is proposed to measure the thermal resistance between top and bottom layers of the solar panel module, which gives an idea about the heat trapped inside the solar panel module. The designed embedded Air-Coil is fully reconfigurable where coil in each layer can be operated as a separate coil. The four coils in different layers can be attached or detached through switches in different configurations i.e. single coil, four in series, four in parallel, and their hybrid combinations. The analyses of power consumption, heat dissipation, temperature rise, magnetic moment and torque generation by different configurations of the designed Air-Coil have been performed. The generated magnetic moment is very high i.e. around 12Am2, which is enough to rotate a microsatellite by 90° in 200s. The efficacy of the proposed module is significantly higher than the already available systems with respect to mass, price, power dissipation, heat generation, and dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the suitability and performance of ANFIS (adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system), ANFIS-PSO (particle swarm optimization), ANFIS-GA (genetic algorithm) and ANFIS-DE (differential evolution) has been investigated for the prediction of monthly and weekly wind power density (WPD) of four different locations named Mersing, Kuala Terengganu, Pulau Langkawi and Bayan Lepas all in Malaysia. For this aim, standalone ANFIS, ANFIS-PSO, ANFIS-GA and ANFIS-DE prediction algorithm are developed in MATLAB platform. The performance of the proposed hybrid ANFIS models is determined by computing different statistical parameters such as mean absolute bias error (MABE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The results obtained from ANFIS-PSO and ANFIS-GA enjoy higher performance and accuracy than other models, and they can be suggested for practical application to predict monthly and weekly mean wind power density. Besides, the capability of the proposed hybrid ANFIS models is examined to predict the wind data for the locations where measured wind data are not available, and the results are compared with the measured wind data from nearby stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel optimization technique for energy management studies of an isolated microgrid. The system is supplied by various Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), Diesel Generator (DG), a Wind Turbine Generator (WTG), Photovoltaic (PV) arrays and supported by fuel cell/electrolyzer Hydrogen storage system for short term storage. Multi-objective optimization is used through non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm to suit the load requirements under the given constraints. A novel multi-objective flower pollination algorithm is utilized to check the results. The Pros and cons of the two optimization techniques are compared and evaluated. An isolated microgrid is modelled using MATLAB software package, dispatch of active/reactive power, optimal load flow analysis with slack bus selection are carried out to be able to minimize fuel cost and line losses under realistic constraints. The performance of the system is studied and analyzed during both summer and winter conditions and three case studies are presented for each condition. The modified IEEE 15 bus system is used to validate the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power system always has several variations in its profile due to random load changes or environmental effects such as device switching effects when generating further transients. Thus, an accurate mathematical model is important because most system parameters vary with time. Curve modeling of power generation is a significant tool for evaluating system performance, monitoring and forecasting. Several numerical techniques compete to fit the curves of empirical data such as wind, solar, and demand power rates. This paper proposes a new modified methodology presented as a parametric technique to determine the system’s modeling equations based on the Bode plot equations and the vector fitting (VF) algorithm by fitting the experimental data points. The modification is derived from the familiar VF algorithm as a robust numerical method. This development increases the application range of the VF algorithm for modeling not only in the frequency domain but also for all power curves. Four case studies are addressed and compared with several common methods. From the minimal RMSE, the results show clear improvements in data fitting over other methods. The most powerful features of this method is the ability to model irregular or randomly shaped data and to be applied to any algorithms that estimating models using frequency-domain data to provide state-space or transfer function for the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) has evolved over time using a combination of bibliometric, social network, and text analysis. We examined the rate of knowledge production as well as changes in authors, journals, and collaborators, showing a steady growth of ALD research. The study of the collaboration network of ALD scientists over time points out that the ALD research community is becoming larger and more interconnected, with a largest connected component that spans 90% of the authors in 2015. In addition, the evolution of network centrality measures (degree and betweenness centrality) and author productivity revealed the central figures in ALD over time, including new “stars” appearing in the last decade. Finally, the study of the title words in our dataset is consistent with a shift in focus on research topics towards energy applications and nanotechnology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human involvement influences traditional service quality evaluations, which triggers an evaluation’s low accuracy, poor reliability and less impressive predictability. This paper proposes a method by employing a support vector machine (SVM) and Dempster-Shafer evidence theory to evaluate the service quality of a production process by handling a high number of input features with a low sampling data set, which is called SVMs-DS. Features that can affect production quality are extracted by a large number of sensors. Preprocessing steps such as feature simplification and normalization are reduced. Based on three individual SVM models, the basic probability assignments (BPAs) are constructed, which can help the evaluation in a qualitative and quantitative way. The process service quality evaluation results are validated by the Dempster rules; the decision threshold to resolve conflicting results is generated from three SVM models. A case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the SVMs-DS method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiesel is an alternative, renewable, biodegradable and environmentally friendly fuel for transportation, with properties like petroleum-derived diesel, and can be used directly in a compression ignition engine without any modifications. The world's fossil fuel and crude oil reserves are going to dry up in the next few decades, but, contrariwise, an attractive, high quality, readily available and economically extractable oil from microalgae is a substitute feedstock to produce alternative biodiesel fuel for the transportation sector in the future. Microalgae have a higher biomass productivity (tons/hectare/year) and lipid yield (kg/kg of algal biomass) as compared to vegetable oil crops. To overcome the problem of energy deficiency in developing countries, like Pakistan, and boost their economic growth, alternative fuels are proving very important for environment-friendly and sustainable development, especially in the last few decades. Different research studies on microalgae cultivation, characterization of microalgae oil (lipids), and evaluations of its socio-economic feasibility to produce renewable biodiesel have been conducted in the past in Pakistan for its future prospects. This review paper includes the overall summary and compilation of the microalgae research conducted in Pakistan on biodiesel production and includes the algal biodiesel production cost analysis. The studies showed promising results for harnessing microalgae and using its lipids to produce biodiesel with favourable properties that were comparable to the conventional diesel in Pakistan. The information related to the microalgae research will help stakeholders and governmental organisations working in the renewable energy sector to consider its cultivation on a large scale, using waste water as a feedstock to produce biodiesel to meet the target set by the Government of Pakistan of using 10% blended biodiesel by the year 2025 in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the traditional smart home system, its electric wiring, networking technology, information transmission and facility control are studied. In this paper, we study the electric wiring, networking technology, information transmission and facility control to improve the traditional smart home system. First, ZigBee is used to replace the traditional electric wiring. Second, a network is built to connect lots of wireless sensors and facilities, thanks to the capability of ZigBee self-organized network and Genetic Algorithm-Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (GA-PSOA) to search for the optimal route. Finally, when the smart home system is connected to the internet based on the remote server technology, home environment and facilities could be remote real-time controlled. The experiments show that the GA-PSOA reduce the system delay and decrease the energy consumption of the wireless system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since wind power is integrated into the thermal power operation system, dynamic economic emission dispatch (DEED) has become a new challenge due to its uncertain characteristics. This paper proposes an adaptive grid based multi-objective Cauchy differential evolution (AGB-MOCDE) for solving stochastic DEED with wind power uncertainty. To properly deal with wind power uncertainty, some scenarios are generated to simulate those possible situations by dividing the uncertainty domain into different intervals, the probability of each interval can be calculated using the cumulative distribution function, and a stochastic DEED model can be formulated under different scenarios. For enhancing the optimization efficiency, Cauchy mutation operation is utilized to improve differential evolution by adjusting the population diversity during the population evolution process, and an adaptive grid is constructed for retaining diversity distribution of Pareto front. With consideration of large number of generated scenarios, the reduction mechanism is carried out to decrease the scenarios number with covariance relationships, which can greatly decrease the computational complexity. Moreover, the constraint-handling technique is also utilized to deal with the system load balance while considering transmission loss among thermal units and wind farms, all the constraint limits can be satisfied under the permitted accuracy. After the proposed method is simulated on three test systems, the obtained results reveal that in comparison with other alternatives, the proposed AGB-MOCDE can optimize the DEED problem while handling all constraint limits, and the optimal scheme of stochastic DEED can decrease the conservation of interval optimization, which can provide a more valuable optimal scheme for real-world applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass gasification stations are facing many hazard factors, therefore, it is necessary to make hazard assessment for them. In this study, a novel hazard assessment method called extended set pair analysis (ESPA) is proposed based on set pair analysis (SPA). However, the calculation of the connection degree (CD) requires the classification of hazard grades and their corresponding thresholds using SPA for the hazard assessment. In regard to the hazard assessment using ESPA, a novel calculation algorithm of the CD is worked out when hazard grades and their corresponding thresholds are unknown. Then the CD can be converted into Euclidean distance (ED) by a simple and concise calculation, and the hazard of each sample will be ranked based on the value of ED. In this paper, six biomass gasification stations are introduced to make hazard assessment using ESPA and general set pair analysis (GSPA), respectively. By the comparison of hazard assessment results obtained from ESPA and GSPA, the availability and validity of ESPA can be proved in the hazard assessment for biomass gasification stations. Meanwhile, the reasonability of ESPA is also justified by the sensitivity analysis of hazard assessment results obtained by ESPA and GSPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the indirect adaptive tracking control of renewable energy sources in a grid-connected hybrid power system. The renewable energy systems have low efficiency and intermittent nature due to unpredictable meteorological conditions. The domestic load and the conventional charging stations behave in an uncertain manner. To operate the renewable energy sources efficiently for harvesting maximum power, instantaneous nonlinear dynamics should be captured online. A Chebyshev-wavelet embedded NeuroFuzzy indirect adaptive MPPT (maximum power point tracking) control paradigm is proposed for variable speed wind turbine-permanent synchronous generator (VSWT-PMSG). A Hermite-wavelet incorporated NeuroFuzzy indirect adaptive MPPT control strategy for photovoltaic (PV) system to extract maximum power and indirect adaptive tracking control scheme for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is developed. A comprehensive simulation test-bed for a grid-connected hybrid power system is developed in Matlab/Simulink. The robustness of the suggested indirect adaptive control paradigms are evaluated through simulation results in a grid-connected hybrid power system test-bed by comparison with conventional and intelligent control techniques. The simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1972, the Minnesota United Power Association (UPA) teamed up with the Minnesota Cooperative Power Association (CPA) to initiate an electrification project designed to bring power from North Dakota to the Twin Cities area. A significant backlash and protest began once farmers across the state became aware of the plan and the potential impending land seizure. In the midst of these actions, one group sought to create an alternative to the power line transmission system by designing a system of wireless energy transmission based on the plans of Nikola Tesla. This self-funded conglomeration of farmers and amateur researchers formed the People’s Power Project (PPP) and set about building Tesla’s system for the wireless transmission of energy. Using archival documents, this paper recounts this episode and argues that, in this case, the potential for successful grassroots action was derailed by the influence of longstanding myths about Tesla and his devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]