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With the deepening of China's low-carbon energy transformation, microgrids are an essential means to promote the consumption of renewable energy. Therefore, improving the operational efficiency of microgrids is the key to promote the development of renewable energy. This paper establishes a three-layer Multi-Agent system model considering the energy storage system and power-heat load demand response based on the actual situation of China to solve the problem of microgrids energy management. In order to verify the effect of the energy storage system and demand response in microgrids, this paper designs three simulation cases, namely the underlying case, energy storage case and demand response case. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed method, this paper applies the proposed method to solve three cases and compare the result with other meta-heuristic algorithms. The comparison results show that: (1) Multi-Agent system model can realize the collaborative optimization of 'source, grid, load, and storage.' (2) The introduction of the energy storage system and demand response in microgrids can stabilize the output of renewable energy units, promote renewable energy consumption and reduce the overall operating cost of microgrids. (3) The proposed particle swarm optimization can effectively reduce the cost and the number of iterations. • This study realizes a real-time energy management system of MG based on MAS. • This paper proves the effect of ESS and DR in MG. • This paper points out how to apply ESS and DR to MG operators. • This paper sets the stopping conditions to a chaotic process for efficiency. • Adaptive weight is added in this paper to reduce the number of iterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental impact of materials and energy is an important concern when cities and regions produce goods and services. To examine this requires an evaluation tool which can deal with the complex system of resources, energy inputs, products and wastes involved. This paper evaluates the urban material and energy flow efficiencies of 31 cities in China using a combination of the Data Envelopment Analysis model and Principal Component Analysis method. The results show that the urban flow system is composed of several input and output principal components, including energy, materials, urban capital investment, overall output, wastes, and others. In 2010, 16 cities were efficient as judged by the material and energy inputs and outputs. The remaining 15 cities were not efficient, primarily due to product shortfalls and waste excesses. Since 2000, half of the analyzed cities experienced a decline in the urban flow efficiencies, while only six cities showed a positive trend. The reasons include excess inputs of coal, coke, electricity, cement, investment, as well as output shortfalls in terms of overall output, wastes, services, agriculture and transport. We conclude that key priorities for improving urban systems with material and energy flow inefficiency are the use of urban renewable supplies, focus on sustainable endogenous development model, and improvement management of waste output, in order to increase efficiency and sustain economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China has now the largest annual outputs of galvanized steel and the most amount of galvanizing plants in the world. However, with obsolete technology, the hot dip galvanizing industry has been proved as one of the industries, which consume large amounts of raw materials and energy, produce numerous pollutants and causes serious contamination in China. Cleaner Production in the hot dip galvanizing industry is now the only way to achieve the sustainable development of hot dip galvanizing industry. The implementation of the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) project: The Transfer of Technology and Promotion of demand: Batch hot dip galvanizing in China launched by International Zinc Association (IZA) is introduced in this paper, The Best Available Technologies of operation, energy and environmental management in the world are also introduced. With the implementation of the project, an assessment system of Cleaner Production and a training system have been developed and implementation of technical updating to the demonstration plant shows that the reduction of zinc loss, and water and fuel cost savings can be achieved. It is believed that the methodology of the project can be applied throughout China as the galvanizers see the cost benefits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]