Use, Operation and Maintenance of Renewable Energy Systems:Experiences and Future Approaches

The aim of this book is to put the reader in contact with real experiences, current and future trends in the context of the use, exploitation and maintenance of renewable energy systems around the world. Today the constant increase of production plants of renewable energy is guided by important social, economical, environmental and technical considerations. The substitution of traditional methods of energy production is a challenge in the current context. New strategies of exploitation, new uses of energy and new maintenance procedures are emerging naturally as isolated actions for solving the integration of these new aspects in the current systems of energy production. This book puts together different experiences in order to be a valuable instrument of reference to take into account when a system of renewable energy production is in operation

Design and control approaches for energy harvesting wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks are monitoring infrastructures composed of sensing (measuring), computing, and communication devices used to observe, supervise and monitor environmental phenomena. Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSN) have the additional feature to save energy from the environment in order to ensure long life autonomy of the entire network, without ideally the human intervention over long periods of time. The present work is aimed to address some of the most significant limitations of the actual EH-WSN, making a step forward the perpetual operation of EH-WSN. In this dissertation, design methodology and management policies are proposed to improve EH-WSN in terms of application performances, traffic congestion and energy efficiency. The study explicitly targets to energy-efficient affordable ways to develop more reliable and trustworthy EH-WSN, capable to ensure long life and desired performances. The presentation is organized into two macro sections, or Parts: the first one is dedicated to design the main EH-WSN hardware and software parameters that affect the energy efficiency of a sensor node, while in the second part three dynamic control strategies are proposed to outperform the EH-WSN in terms of energy efficiency, traffic congestion and application requirements

2009 Annual Progress Report: DOE Hydrogen Program

This report summarizes the hydrogen and fuel cell R&D activities and accomplishments of the DOE Hydrogen Program for FY2009. It covers the program areas of hydrogen production and delivery; fuel cells; manufacturing; technology validation; safety, codes and standards; education; and systems analysis