Land remote sensing commercialization: A status report

The current offer by the United States Department of Commerce to transfer the U.S. land remote sensing program to the private sector is described. A Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued, soliciting offers from U.S. firms to provide a commercial land remote sensing satellite system. Proposals must address a complete system including satellite, communications, and ground data processing systems. Offerors are encouraged to propose to take over the Government LANDSAT system which consists of LANDSAT 4 and LANDSAT D'. Also required in proposals are the market development procedures and plans to ensure that commercialization is feasible and the business will become self-supporting at the earliest possible time. As a matter of Federal Policy, the solicitation is designed to protect both national security and foreign policy considerations. In keeping with these concerns, an offeror must be a U.S. Firm. Requirements for data quality, quantity, distribution and delivery are met by current operational procedures. It is the Government's desire that the Offeror be prepared to develop and operate follow-on systems without Government subsidies. However, to facilitate rapid commercialization, an offeror may elect to include in his proposal mechanisms for short term government financial assistance

Design study to simulate the development of a commercial transportation system

Seven teams of senior-level Aerospace Engineering undergraduates were given a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a design concept of a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV). The RPV designs were intended to simulate commercial transport aircraft within the model of 'Aeroworld.' The Aeroworld model was developed so that the RPV designs would be subject to many of the engineering problems and tradeoffs that dominate real-world commercial air transport designs, such as profitability, fuel efficiency, range vs. payload capabilities, and ease of production and maintenance. As part of the proposal, each team was required to construct a prototype and validate its design with a flight demonstration

Nodal Project Evaluation Applied to Large-Scale Renewable Energy Procurment: A case analysis of Massachusetts clean energy initiative

Abstract Evaluating a large number of renewable energy project proposals received in response to a single Request for Proposals (RFP) in a consistent manner independent of size and technology and fully cognizant of location and timing is a significant challenge. The current paper presents a methodology and set of tools for preparing a comparative quantitative evaluation of the economic and environmental benefits and costs of the renewable project proposals over a 25-year time horizon. The paper presents a case study of the large-scale renewable energy procurements undertaken in 2018 to comply with Massachusetts energy diversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goals mandated under its “Green Communities Act” of 2008 and Global Warming Solutions Act” of 2008. Section 83D of the Green Communities Act requires Massachusetts electric distribution companies (EDCs) to acquire 9,450 gigawatt hours per year of cost-effective renewable energy. The quantitative evaluation of each proposed renewable project is based on a scenario analysis approach in which a simulation modeling tool calculates energy costs and GHG emissions in the Northeast region (New England and New York) over the evaluation period for a “but for” case without any of the proposed renewable projects and for individual cases for each proposed renewable project. Working from a single database structure, the simulation modeling tool moves from a 30-year, annual resource adequacy module, to an hourly, nodal, 20-year plus SCUC / SCD, to a detailed capacity market valuation model. The simulation modeling system (ENELYTIX) operates with cloud-based technology utilizing user-friendly Excel interfacing with complex data / information transfer from an OLAP cube on the cloud to users’ workstations

The role of distribution network operators in promoting cost-effective distributed generation: Lessons from the United States for Europe

We explore the different competitive mechanisms applied by electric utilities from the USA in promoting cost-effective Distribution Generation (DG) resources and the challenges that they face due to the increase in DG connections. Case studies from California, Oregon, Colorado and New York are discussed. The case studies refer to two kinds of competitive mechanisms: Request for Proposals (RFP) and auctions (Renewable Auction Mechanism). The study proposes an auction design with a focus on the UK context and examines the role of energy regulators in auction mechanisms. We think that the experience described in the four case studies can be replicated by Distribution System Operators (DSOs) in Europe, however unbundling rules established in the EC third package need to be taken into consideration

Municipality Solar Power Guidelines

This project presents a case study of the New Bedford Solar Initiative in order to develop guidelines for other Massachusetts municipalities. The first phase of this project was to research solar energy and the solar industry, specifically in Massachusetts. The second phase was to interview municipality energy directors, solar developers, and state offices. The third phase was to develop a set of guidelines that will provide an overview for municipalities interested in generating a renewable energy program, specifically in solar power. The focus is to provide insight to a municipality members on common methods, while guiding them towards potential ways to expedite the process. The goal is to provide a source for municipalities to reference, should they intend to procure solar power

An Interpretable Deep Learning System for Automatically Scoring Request for Proposals

The Managed Care system within Medicaid (US Healthcare) uses Request For Proposals (RFP) to award contracts for various healthcare and related services. RFP responses are very detailed documents (hundreds of pages) submitted by competing organisations to win contracts. Subject matter expertise and domain knowledge play an important role in preparing RFP responses along with analysis of historical submissions. Automated analysis of these responses through Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems can reduce time and effort needed to explore historical responses, and assisting in writing better responses. Our work draws parallels between scoring RFPs and essay scoring models, while highlighting new challenges and the need for interpretability. Typical scoring models focus on word level impacts to grade essays and other short write-ups. We propose a novel Bi-LSTM based regression model, and provide deeper insight into phrases which latently impact scoring of responses. We contend the merits of our proposed methodology using extensive quantitative experiments. We also qualitatively asses the impact of important phrases using human evaluators. Finally, we introduce a novel problem statement that can be used to further improve the state of the art in NLP based automatic scoring systems.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Request for Proposal for Campus Rec Center Services

RFP #2018-17, seeking a Campus Recreation Center Software Solution to serve as a membership software for the University of Maine at Machias Fitness/Rec Center

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD) system. Volume 2: Characterization of the IPAD system, phase 1, task 1

The aircraft design process is discussed along with the degree of participation of the various engineering disciplines considered in this feasibility study