BPM Tools for Asset Management in Renewable Energy Power Plants

Business Process Management (BPM) is an accepted discipline and its importance in increasing automation inside industrial environment is today recognized by all players. The complexity of modern management process will lead to chaos without a well-designed and effective BPM. Several BPM Suites were compared and BPM approach was applied to the case study of process management in a renewable energy power plant. Results both in process reduction and simplification and flow optimization obtained in the real case are discussed to state efficacy and efficiency of the adopted approach

Performance measurement of energy processes in Czech production plants

The part of research which is described in this article was focused on Performance Measurement of energy processes and approach especially of Czech production plants (defined below) to this area of interest. The main aim of the research was to check and describe the situation in the energy processes area of the Czech production plants, its managing and measuring. The aim of the article is to find and describe main impacts and actual approach of Czech industrial companies in energy processes performance measurement (energy prices and consumption analysis, actual level of performance measurement utilization in plant at all and directly in energy area, performance management (PM) methods utilization, KPÍs used). For these results outputs from quantitative research were used. As was found, the energy processes, as supporting processes to core ones, in the production plants are not mapped, described and summarized in one methodical document to be able to increase the effectiveness of managing and performance measurement. The performance measurement methods are not used for energy processes. Key Performance Indicators (KPÍs), which are included in the Performance Measurement System (PMS), are not stated, only the physical energy flow indicators are implemented in the local systems. This was (and actually is) represented by the energy prices variation, respectively its increasing, absence of the clear statement of the coal usage and mining, the pressure to consumption reduction, reducing CO2 and the needs of fast reaction in various energy medium using. © Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade

Power grid integration and use-case study of acid-base flow battery technology

There are many different types of energy storage systems (ESS) available and the functionality that they can provide is extensive. However, each of these solutions come with their own set of drawbacks. The acid-base flow battery (ABFB) technology aims to provide a route to a cheap, clean and safe ESS by means of providing a new kind of energy storage technology based on reversible dissociation of water via bipolar electrodialysis. First, the main characteristics of the ABFB technology are described briefly to highlight its main advantages and drawbacks and define the most-competitive use-case scenarios in which the technology could be applied, as well as analyze the particular characteristics which must be considered in the process of designing the power converter to be used for the interface with the electrical network. As a result, based on the use-cases defined, the ESS main specifications are going to be identified, pointing out the best power converter configuration alternatives. Finally, an application example is presented, showing an installation in the electrical network of Pantelleria (Italy) where a real pilot-scale prototype has been installed

Business intelligence in the electrical power industry

Nowadays, the electrical power industry has gained tremendous interest from both entrepreneurs and researchers due to its essential roles in everyday life. However, the current sources for generating electricity are astonishing decreasing, which leads to more challenges for the power industry. Based on the viewpoint of sustainable development, the solution should maintain three layers of economically, ecologically, and society; simultaneously, support business decision-making, increases organizational productivity and operational energy efficiency. In the smart and innovative technology context, business intelligence solution is considered as a potential option in the data-rich environment, which is still witnessed disjointed theoretical progress. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct a systematic literature review and build a body of knowledge related to business intelligence in the electrical power sector. The author also built an integrative framework displaying linkages between antecedents and outcomes of business intelligence in the electrical power industry. Finally, the paper depicted the underexplored areas of the literature and shed light on the research objectives in terms of theoretical and practical implications

GIS-based approach for optimization of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Finland

Wind power is a rapidly developing, low-emission form of energy production. In Fin-land, the official objective is to increase wind power capacity from the current 1 005 MW up to 3 500–4 000 MW by 2025. By the end of April 2015, the total capacity of all wind power project being planned in Finland had surpassed 11 000 MW. As the amount of projects in Finland is record high, an increasing amount of infrastructure is also being planned and constructed. Traditionally, these planning operations are conducted using manual and labor-intensive work methods that are prone to subjectivity. This study introduces a GIS-based methodology for determining optimal paths to sup-port the planning of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Nordanå-Lövböle wind park located on the island of Kemiönsaari in Southwest Finland. The presented methodology utilizes a least-cost path (LCP) algorithm for searching of optimal paths within a high resolution real-world terrain dataset derived from airborne lidar scannings. In addition, planning data is used to provide a realistic planning framework for the anal-ysis. In order to produce realistic results, the physiographic and planning datasets are standardized and weighted according to qualitative suitability assessments by utilizing methods and practices offered by multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The results are pre-sented as scenarios to correspond various different planning objectives. Finally, the methodology is documented by using tools of Business Process Management (BPM). The results show that the presented methodology can be effectively used to search and identify extensive, 20 to 35 kilometers long networks of paths that correspond to certain optimization objectives in the study area. The utilization of high-resolution terrain data produces a more objective and more detailed path alignment plan. This study demon-strates that the presented methodology can be practically applied to support a wind power infrastructure alignment planning process. The six-phase structure of the method-ology allows straightforward incorporation of different optimization objectives. The methodology responds well to combining quantitative and qualitative data. Additional-ly, the careful documentation presents an example of how the methodology can be eval-uated and developed as a business process. This thesis also shows that more emphasis on the research of algorithm-based, more objective methods for the planning of infrastruc-ture alignment is desirable, as technological development has only recently started to realize the potential of these computational methods.Siirretty Doriast

Novel processes for smart grid information exchange and knowledge representation using the IEC common information model

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The IEC Common Information Model (CIM) is of central importance in enabling smart grid interoperability. Its continual development aims to meet the needs of the smart grid for semantic understanding and knowledge representation for a widening domain of resources and processes. With smart grid evolution the importance of information and data management has become an increasingly pressing issue not only because far more data is being generated using modern sensing, control and measuring devices but also because information is now becoming recognised as the ‘integral component’ that facilitates the optimal flexibility required of the smart grid. This thesis looks at the impacts of CIM implementation upon the landscape of smart grid issues and presents research from within National Grid contributing to three key areas in support of further CIM deployment. Taking the issue of Enterprise Information Management first, an information management framework is presented for CIM deployment at National Grid. Following this the development and demonstration of a novel secure cloud computing platform to handle such information is described. Power system application (PSA) models of the grid are partial knowledge representations of a shared reality. To develop the completeness of our understanding of this reality it is necessary to combine these representations. The second research contribution reports on a novel methodology for a CIM-based model repository to align PSA representations and provide a knowledge resource for building utility business intelligence of the grid. The third contribution addresses the need for greater integration of information relating to energy storage, an essential aspect of smart energy management. It presents the strategic rationale for integrated energy modeling and a novel extension to the existing CIM standards for modeling grid-scale energy storage. Significantly, this work has already contributed to a larger body of work on modeling Distributed Energy Resources currently under development at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the USA.Dr. Martin Bradley on behalf of National Grid Plc. and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

An analysis of the quality of environmental disclosures in the annual financial statements of selected South African companies and a suggested environmental reporting model

Includes bibliographies and references.Environmental damage has become of widespread concern, so much so that some companies are disclosing environmental information in their annual reports, the traditional medium for communication to shareholders and other users. There is no recognised reporting model or framework for the reporting of environmental information. As a result, these disclosures are often ad hoc, and objective determination of their quality is extremely difficult. Furthermore, to the writer's knowledge, no survey of environmental disclosures has been conducted in South Africa. The objectives of this dissertation included the determination of an appropriate environmental reporting model, based on the critical review of the accounting legal and economic literatures. The reporting model suggested is that of compliance with legal environmental standards, with certain additional financial information. An existing disclosure index, enabling the objective measurement of environmental disclosure quality, was extended and adapted to the South African situation. Analysis of the index scores revealed an improvement in the quality of environmental disclosures over a five year period, and that disclosures are not influenced by a company's total assets or the presence of international shareholders. Analysis of index scores on a group basis revealed that disclosures are not made as a result of a top-down approach. However, companies in similar industries in a group tended to have almost identical disclosures. Comparison of the results of the South African survey with a similar American one, revealed a significant disparity between disclosure scores for the oil, paper and steel industries. This disparity is exacerbated by the difference in time period of at least 15 years, and suggests that the difference in disclosure quality is possibly as a result of the disparity in content and enforcement of legal environmental standards. With the opening up of international markets to South African business, producers may no longer be able to ignore international environmental standards, and the poor quality of South African disclosures may well prove unacceptable. Without more effective legal environmental standards, there will be little progress towards improved environmental disclosures

Grid Reliability in the Electric Era

The United States has delegated the weighty responsibility of keeping the lights on to a self-regulatory organization called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Despite the fact that NERC is one of the largest and most important examples of industry-led governance—and regulates in an area that is central to our economy and basic human survival— this unusual institution has received scant attention from policymakers and scholars. Such attention is overdue. To achieve deep decarbonization, the United States must enter a new “electric era,” transitioning many sectors to run on electricity while also transforming the electricity system itself to run largely on clean but intermittent renewable resources. These new resources demand new approaches to electric grid reliability—approaches that the NERC model of reliability governance may inadequately deliver. This Article traces NERC’s history, situates NERC in ongoing debates about climate change and grid reliability, and assesses the viability of reliability selfregulation in the coming electric era. It may have made sense to delegate the task of maintaining U.S. electric grid reliability to a self-regulatory organization in prior decades, when regulated monopolies managed nearly every segment of electricity production. But many of the criteria that NERC used to justify selfregulation earlier in its history—electric utilities’ expertise, widespread agreement about the organization’s goals, and an industry structure in which regulated parties’ interests align with the public’s—no longer hold. The climate crisis creates a need for expertise beyond NERC’s domain, while the introduction of competition to large parts of the electricity sector blurs lines of accountability for reliability failures. NERC’s structure also perpetuates an incumbency bias at odds with public goals for the energy transition. These shifting conditions have caused NERC to fail to keep pace with the reliability challenges of the electric era. Worse still, outdated NERC standards often help entrench fossil fuel interests by justifying electricity market rules poorly suited to accommodate renewable resources. We therefore suggest a suite of reforms that would increase direct government oversight and accountability in electricity reliability regulation