Luiz H. N. Rodrigues, Carlos F. M. Almeida, Nelson Kagan
et al.
With the advent of Industry 5.0, the electrical sector has been endowed with intelligent devices that are propelling high penetration of distributed energy microgeneration, VPP, smart buildings, and smart plants and imposing new challenges on the sector. This new environment requires a smarter network, including transforming the simple electricity customer into a “smart customer” who values the quality of energy and its rational use. The SPG (smart power grid) is the perfect solution for meeting these needs. It is crucial to understand energy use to guarantee quality of service and meet data security requirements. The use of simulations to map the behavior of complex infrastructures is the best strategy because it overcomes the limitations of traditional analytical solutions. This article presents the ICT laboratory structure developed within the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Polytechnic School of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). It is based on an architecture that utilizes LTE/EPC wireless technology (4G, 5G, and B5G) to enable machine-to-machine communication (mMTC) between SPG elements using edge computing (MEC) resources and those of smart city platforms. We evaluate this proposal through simulations using data from real and emulated equipment and co-simulations shared by SPG laboratories at POLI-USP. Finally, we present the preliminary results of integration of the power laboratory, network simulation (ns-3), and a smart city platform (InterSCity) for validation and testing of the architecture.
Mohamed Hariri Muhammad Hafeez, Joohari Muhammad Imran, Abd Halim Amir Rabani
et al.
The increasing imperative for sustainable energy solutions has significantly amplified the demand for commercial grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems, particularly those integrated into rooftop installations within urbanized environments. Malaysia's Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 policy, a cornerstone of the nation's renewable energy strategy, permits commercial establishments to connect up to 75% of their peak electrical demand capacity to the national grid. This strategic allowance empowers property owners to substantially offset their energy expenditures and realize considerable savings on electricity bills over extended periods. The widespread deployment of PV systems leads to complexities notably concerning the grid's power factor which may lead to thermal inefficiencies and potential failures of switching apparatus within the electrical infrastructure. This research presents a detailed design analysis and economic evaluation of a substantial 4324.75 kWp rooftop PV system by utilizing the GCPV system. The study leverages specialized PV system software (PVsyst) to conduct environmental, financial, and technical assessments specifically at the USM Engineering Campus, Penang, Malaysia. Empirical data from 2023 reveal that the USM Engineering Campus achieved an approximate saving of RM 2.2 million during the initial year following the installation of its grid-connected PV system. It is observed that the degradation in the system's power factor from an initial 0.96 to 0.83 was primarily attributed to the suboptimal operational state of the pre-existing capacitor banks. The financial analysis specifically tailored for the commercial buildings operating under the NEM 3.0 framework projects a favorable five-year return on investment (ROI). This research serves as a valuable case study for commercial building owners contemplating the adoption of green energy production and exploring significant avenues for cost reduction.
Hydropower plants with a small installed capacity, which are widely distributed in mountainous areas with abundant rainfall and steep rivers, play an important role in resolving energy problems in remote rural areas. These plants are a crucial source of clean electricity generated from water power. Harnessing local water resources not only helps alleviate energy shortages, but also reduces reliance on fossil fuels, contributing significantly to China’s national goals of achieving peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. This study investigates the carbon footprint of the Huangshadong Reservoir Project in Chongqing, China. The entire life cycle of the hydropower plant is assessed, including the preparation, construction, operation and maintenance, and demolition phases. The uncertainty was evaluated using the error propagation method. Following analysis, suggestions for carbon footprint reduction measures were proposed. Results showed that the total carbon footprint and the carbon intensity of the Huangshadong Reservoir Project over its entire life cycle are 33,148.29 t CO2e and 417.75 g CO2e/kWh, respectively. Of the total carbon footprint, the preparation phase, construction phase, operation and maintenance phase, and demolition phase account for 0.04%, 67.06%, 26.2%, and 6.7%, respectively. It means that the requirement for cement during the construction phase represents an important contribution to the entire life cycle carbon footprint of a small hydropower plant. As an integrated water conservancy project, the carbon intensity of the Huangshadong Reservoir Project is higher than that of medium-sized and large hydropower plants. However, its carbon intensity is lower than the emission factor of fossil power plants. The research results provide reference for both planning and construction of small hydropower plants and low-carbon development of rural hydraulic engineering.
Lester C. Hunt, Paraskevas Kipouros, Zafeirios Lamprakis
The need for renewable energy is regarded as a major component in the move towards achieving sustainable development. Using a large sample of 177 countries over the period 1990 to 2020, this research explores the impact of the most significant drivers of renewable energy. Findings from this work contribute to the literature by identifying the most significant drivers of renewable energy deployment and their different responses in developed and developing economies. Empirical results suggest that GDP, oil price, access to electricity, and CO<sub>2</sub> and methane emissions are significant determinants of renewables both as a share in energy consumption and as a share in electricity production. Additionally, trade is found to be a significant driver for the share of renewables in total energy consumption but not for the share of renewables in the electricity production model. Finally, our findings indicate that the factors influencing the development of renewables vary significantly between developed and developing countries, necessitating distinct approaches for each group of countries. These results can play a significant role from a policy perspective in designing and implementing specific policies to increase renewable energy deployment.
G. K. Jabash Samuel, M. S. Sivagama Sundari, R. Bhavani
et al.
Today’s electricity management mainly focuses on smart grid implementation for better power utilization. Supply-demand balancing, and high operating costs are still considered the most challenging factors in the smart grid. To overcome this drawback, a Markov fuzzy real-time demand-side manager (MARKOV FRDSM) is proposed to reduce the operating cost of the smart grid system and maintain a supply-demand balance in an uncertain environment. In addition, a non-linear model predictive controller (NMPC) is designed to give a global solution to the non-linear optimization problem with real-time requirements based on the uncertainties over the forecasted load demands and current load status. The proposed MARKOV FRDSM provides a faster scale power allocation concerning fuzzy optimization and deals with uncertainties and imprecision. The implemented results show the proposed MARKOV FRDSM model reduces the cost of operation of the microgrid by 1.95%, 1.16%, and 1.09% than the existing method such as differential evolution and real coded genetic algorithm and maintains the supply-demand balance in the microgrid.
Electricity emission factors are widely used in carbon accounting of different subjects such as industries, enterprises and products. Due to the different resource endowments in China, the differences of regional power emission factors are more significant. The use of national, regional and provincial emission factors will have greater impacts on the indirect carbon accounting of industrial enterprises and products. It directly affects the provincial "double carbon" indicator assessment, the payment of tariffs on the export of energy-consuming products and the costs of compliance in the domestic carbon market. This study takes the electrolytic aluminum industry as an example to measure the impacts of the selection of electricity emission factors on the carbon accounting of products in energy-consuming industries. The results show that the selection of electricity emission factors needs to be tailored to the application scenarios of the accounting subject. From the perspective of promoting fairness, the national carbon emissions trading market should adopt the national average electricity emission factor. While assessing the carbon emission intensity of provincial and sub-provincial administrative regions, compiling greenhouse gas inventories of provincial and sub-provincial administrative regions, and disclosing the voluntary greenhouse gas emission reports of enterprises, priority should be given to adopting the average emission factor of electricity corresponding to the provincial power grids.
Electricity, Production of electric energy or power. Powerplants. Central stations
Recently, multiple-cross polarization (multiCP) has attracted much interest owing to its favorable performance as a solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantitative method. Relating investigations revealed that the setup of multiCP parameters relies on the properties of the samples. Diverse types of samples require different parameters. To improve the tolerance to sample properties, an improved method named MLGCP-1 was proposed in this work, which employed Lee-Goldburg cross polarization technique. L-alanine, L-valine and their mixtures were chosen as model samples to evaluate the performance of MLGCP-1 method. multiCP experiments were also conducted for comparison. Based on the test of molecular group ratio, it was revealed that the range of contact time tp of MLGCP-1 was larger than that of multiCP, which improved from 1.0~1.3 ms to 0.8~2.0 ms. Moreover, according to the study of L-valine and mixtures, it was revealed that the range of tp was influenced by the difference of cross relaxation time TCH. Large TCH difference limited tp range for quantification. This manner was in accordance with multiCP. However, the tp range of MLGCP-1 was markedly enlarged in comparison with multiCP, presenting higher tolerance to the sample properties.
Ufuk Sekmen, Omer Faruk Yildiz, Mehmet Yilmaz
et al.
Submersible pumps, widely used in deep wells drilled to meet the water needs of users in urban areas, add an additional load to the conventional electricity grid infrastructure and are responsible for increasing the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The main objective of this study is to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of using solar photovoltaic (PV) energy to reduce the net power drawn from the grid by submersible pumps in urban water supply systems. The Germiraltı catchment area (Kayseri, Turkey), which provides all of its energy needs from the city electricity grid, was chosen as the research area. Two different scenarios, ‘hybrid-powered water pumping system’ and ‘grid-connected PV system’, were analyzed and evaluated. A 1,620 kWp grid-connected PV system can inject 2,787.8 MWh/year of energy into the grid, which is more than the total annual energy need of the submersible pumps. The system operates with 85.7% performance ratio (PR), 19.6% capacity factor (CF) and 4.71 (h/d) final yield. The payback period of the system is calculated as 4.1 years. The results show that it is economically competitive to meet the energy needs of submersible pumps in urban water supply systems with solar PV energy. HIGHLIGHTS
Submersible pumps, which have been widely used in urban water supply systems, consume a considerable amount of energy.;
Feasibility of using solar PV energy in urban water supply systems is investigated.;
Two scenarios, ‘hybrid-powered water pumping system’ and ‘grid-connected PV system’, are analyzed and evaluated.;
The grid-connected PV system is found to be a more feasible and viable alternative for Germiraltı catchment area.;
Vinod Kumar Sharma, Rajesh Singh, Anita Gehlot
et al.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2030 agenda illustrates the requirement of expanding infrastructure and advancing technology for delivering modern and sustainable energy services for all in developing countries. Moreover, UNDP also set a goal of increasing the renewable energy share in the global energy. Renewable energy resources are eco-friendly and widely available resources from nature for generating energy. Geothermal energy, wind energy, solar energy, tidal energy, and biomass energy are renewable energy sources. Solar energy is one of the renewable energy generation approaches that harvests energy widely from sun radiation. Photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) are the primary technologies to capture solar energy. This study presents the significance of utilizing solar energy for electricity generation globally using PV and CSP technologies. Furthermore, the distinct energy capturing and storing mechanisms of PV and CSP technologies are presented in detail. This article presents the significance and implementation of thermal energy storage for storing energy obtained through CSP technology. Finally, the study presents a considerable gap between PV and CSP in terms of development with future trends.
Alexandra Vrachni, Angeliki Christogerou, George A. Thomopoulos
et al.
Climate change has already had observable effects due to greenhouse gases (GHG) produced by human activities. Over the years, this becomes more evident as the concentration of GHG released in the atmosphere is concerningly increased as does the earth’s average temperature too. Hence, all countries and many independent organizations are taking actions to reduce the Global Warming phenomenon by setting targets for carbon dioxide emissions. The energy sector is proved to play the most important role in emissions reduction. Greece’s target for this sector is very ambitious in total transformation of energy mixture in the forthcoming years. Universities are also contributing to GHG emissions through their operations and members’ activities. Energy management at the University of Patras in Greece has already started since 2019 by installing energy meters going from manual calculations to an online system. The reliable records and accurate calculations proved as a very important action and a starting point for performing detailed analysis. In this study, there was an effort to calculate the CO<sub>2</sub> emissions of the University of Patras using the Carbon Campus Calculator. The results showed that the students commuting is the main source of GHG emissions at the University of Patras and the purchased electricity comes next. These two factors together comprise 60.2% of the total emissions and priority should be given to reducing their footprint. Specific targets were set up for 2030 in compliance with the National Plan for Energy and Climate of Greece. Moreover, an Action Plan managing carbon and energy more efficiently and creating a strong environmental culture among the community is proposed. In the future, the university’s management team should act proactively in every change at Patras University. An assessment on the environmental impact should take place before any decision making. If necessary, extra actions should be defined in order not to deviate from the targets and new standards set.
Anton Ming-Zhi Gao, Tsung Kuang Yeh, Jong-Shun Chen
Taiwan launched an energy transition agenda to pursue a nuclear-free homeland by 2025 after the anti-nuclear party won the 2016 presidential and parliament elections. In 2016, the 2025 electricity mix target was set to 50% gas-fired power, 30% coal-fired power, and 20% renewable electricity (RE), and thus, no nuclear power. Despite many efforts, the electricity mix remained far from these targets at the end of 2020: coal-fired power, 43.5%; gas-fired power, 38%; RE, 7.1%; and nuclear power, 8.5%. This study evaluates the possibility of achieving the 2025 targets and the barriers to reaching each target. It also uses the concept of a ‘just’ energy transition to assess whether this vision meets the related criteria and why.