Load balancing techniques for I/O intensive tasks on heterogeneous clusters

Load balancing schemes in a cluster system play a critically important role in developing highperformance cluster computing platform. Existing load balancing approaches are concerned with the effective usage of CPU and memory resources. I/O-intensive tasks running on a heterogeneous cluster need a highly effective usage of global I/O resources, previous CPU-or memory-centric load balancing schemes suffer significant performance drop under I/O- intensive workload due to the imbalance of I/O load. To solve this problem, Zhang et al. developed two I/O-aware load-balancing schemes, which consider system heterogeneity and migrate more I/O-intensive tasks from a node with high I/O utilization to those with low I/O utilization. If the workload is memory-intensive in nature, the new method applies a memory-based load balancing policy to assign the tasks. Likewise, when the workload becomes CPU-intensive, their scheme leverages a CPU-based policy as an efficient means to balance the system load. In doing so, the proposed approach maintains the same level of performance as the existing schemes when I/O load is low or well balanced. Results from a trace-driven simulation study show that, when a workload is I/O-intensive, the proposed schemes improve the performance with respect to mean slowdown over the existing schemes by up to a factor of 8. In addition, the slowdowns of almost all the policies increase consistently with the system heterogeneity

A Review on Energy Consumption Optimization Techniques in IoT Based Smart Building Environments

In recent years, due to the unnecessary wastage of electrical energy in residential buildings, the requirement of energy optimization and user comfort has gained vital importance. In the literature, various techniques have been proposed addressing the energy optimization problem. The goal of each technique was to maintain a balance between user comfort and energy requirements such that the user can achieve the desired comfort level with the minimum amount of energy consumption. Researchers have addressed the issue with the help of different optimization algorithms and variations in the parameters to reduce energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is not solved yet due to its challenging nature. The gap in the literature is due to the advancements in the technology and drawbacks of the optimization algorithms and the introduction of different new optimization algorithms. Further, many newly proposed optimization algorithms which have produced better accuracy on the benchmark instances but have not been applied yet for the optimization of energy consumption in smart homes. In this paper, we have carried out a detailed literature review of the techniques used for the optimization of energy consumption and scheduling in smart homes. The detailed discussion has been carried out on different factors contributing towards thermal comfort, visual comfort, and air quality comfort. We have also reviewed the fog and edge computing techniques used in smart homes

Adaptive sampling-based profiling techniques for optimizing the distributed JVM runtime

Extending the standard Java virtual machine (JVM) for cluster-awareness is a transparent approach to scaling out multithreaded Java applications. While this clustering solution is gaining momentum in recent years, efficient runtime support for fine-grained object sharing over the distributed JVM remains a challenge. The system efficiency is strongly connected to the global object sharing profile that determines the overall communication cost. Once the sharing or correlation between threads is known, access locality can be optimized by collocating highly correlated threads via dynamic thread migrations. Although correlation tracking techniques have been studied in some page-based sof Tware DSM systems, they would entail prohibitively high overheads and low accuracy when ported to fine-grained object-based systems. In this paper, we propose a lightweight sampling-based profiling technique for tracking inter-thread sharing. To preserve locality across migrations, we also propose a stack sampling mechanism for profiling the set of objects which are tightly coupled with a migrant thread. Sampling rates in both techniques can vary adaptively to strike a balance between preciseness and overhead. Such adaptive techniques are particularly useful for applications whose sharing patterns could change dynamically. The profiling results can be exploited for effective thread-to-core placement and dynamic load balancing in a distributed object sharing environment. We present the design and preliminary performance result of our distributed JVM with the profiling implemented. Experimental results show that the profiling is able to obtain over 95% accurate global sharing profiles at a cost of only a few percents of execution time increase for fine- to medium- grained applications. © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 24th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel & Distributed Processing (IPDPS 2010), Atlanta, GA., 19-23 April 2010. In Proceedings of the 24th IPDPS, 2010, p. 1-1

Review and assessment of the different categories of demand response potentials

Demand Response (DR) is a well-known concept which has been recognized as an increasingly valuable tool to provide flexibility to the power system, to support the integration of Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) resources and to manage the grid more efficiently. In recent years, there have been a growing number of publications focusing on the estimation of different categories of DR potentials (e.g. theoretical, technical, economic, and achievable) using different methodologies and assumptions in each research study. The contribution of the present study is twofold. Firstly, a literature review is undertaken focusing specifically on the categorization of the scientific approaches used to estimate the different categories of DR potentials. To the best of authors' knowledge, a general procedure for the estimation of each DR potential category is still missing. Therefore, a novel user-friendly and step-by-step theoretical framework for the determination of the different categories of DR potentials is presented. Findings of this study reveal that literature has extensively focused on the estimation of the technical DR potential followed by the economic, theoretical and achievable potentials respectively. A lack of understanding of the different categories of DR potentials was also identified, which sometimes have been unduly used in the literature. The proposed framework is supported on a small sample of numerical approaches and equations which results in a structured approach to bringing consensus to the DR potential assessment. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil. This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (Portugal) within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019 and the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation COMPETE 2020 Programme, and by National Funds through FCT, within project SAICTPAC/0004/2015 POCI/01/0145/FEDER/016434

Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities

Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

A Balancing Demand Response Clustering Approach of Domestic Electricity for Day-Ahead Markets

This paper introduces a new clustering approach for multi-customer intelligent demand response for customers living in the same or closer smart grid locations using real electricity consumption data from smart meters. Most of the demand side management or customer tariffs focused on a single customer to optimize their usage discarding the others connected to the same grid. The proposed balancing clustering focus on the customers connected to the same or closest grid to optimize the smooth operating of the energy producers. This approach offers a triple win-win-win model for peak and low consumption customers as well as the balancing for the producer/ distributor utility companies for planning the day ahead markets. This paper uses the most widely used clustering method of k-means for finding similar customers on the opposing side peak, low consumption profiles and combines the most distinguished customers forming more uniform consumption for day-ahead market. This customer balancing and grouping them provides a better way toaggregate residential load data for power buy and sell for all sides and results in better load scheduling

Sizing hybrid green hydrogen energy generation and storage systems (HGHES) to enable an increase in renewable penetration for stabilising the grid.

A problem that has become apparently growing in the deployment of renewable energy systems is the power grids inability to accept the forecasted growth in renewable energy generation integration. To support forecasted growth in renewable generation integration, it is now recognised that Energy Storage Technologies (EST) must be utilised. Recent advances in Hydrogen Energy Storage Technologies (HEST) have unlocked their potential for use with constrained renewable generation. HEST combines Hydrogen production, storage and end use technologies with renewable generation in either a directly connected configuration, or indirectly via existing power networks. A levelised cost (LC) model has been developed within this thesis to identify the financial competitiveness of the different HEST application scenarios when used with grid constrained renewable energy. Five HEST scenarios have been investigated to demonstrate the most financially competitive configuration and the benefit that the by-product oxygen from renewable electrolysis can have on financial competitiveness. Furthermore, to address the lack in commercial software tools available to size an energy system incorporating HEST with limited data, a deterministic modelling approach has been developed to enable the initial automatic sizing of a hybrid renewable hydrogen energy system (HRHES) for a specified consumer demand. Within this approach, a worst-case scenario from the financial competitiveness analysis has been used to demonstrate that initial sizing of a HRHES can be achieved with only two input data, namely “ the available renewable resource and the load profile. The effect of the electrolyser thermal transients at start-up on the overall quantity of hydrogen produced (and accordingly the energy stored), when operated in conjunction with an intermittent renewable generation source, has also been modelled. Finally, a mass-transfer simulation model has been developed to investigate the suitability of constrained renewable generation in creating hydrogen for a hydrogen refuelling station