Design and operation of modular microgrids

textMicrogrids are being considered as a solution for implementing more reliable and flexible power systems compared to the conventional power grid. Various factors, such as low system inertia, might make the task of microgrid design and operation to be nontrivial. In order to address the needs for operational flexibility in a simpler manner, this dissertation discusses modular approaches for design and operation of microgrids. This research investigates Active Power Distribution Nodes (APDNs), which is a storage integrated power electronic interface, as an interface block for designing modular microgrids. To perform both voltage/current regulation and energy management of APDNs, two hierarchical control frameworks for APDNs are proposed. The first framework focuses on maintaining the charge level of the embedded energy storage at the highest available level to increase system availability, and the second framework focuses on autonomous power sharing, and storage management. The detailed design process, control performance and stability characteristics are also studied. The performance is also verified by both simulation and experiments. The control approaches enable application of APDNs as a power router realizing distributed energy management. The decentralized configuration also increases modularity and availability of power networks by preventing single point-of-failures. The advantages of using APDNs as a connection interface inside a power network are discussed from an availability perspective by performing a comparison using Markov-based availability models. Furthermore, the operation of APDNs as power buffers is explored and the application of APDNs enabling modular implementation of microgrids is also studied. APDNs enable the system expansion process—i.e. connecting new loads to the original system—to be performed without modifying the configuration of the original system. The analysis results show that a fault-tolerant microgrid with an open architecture can be realized in a modular manner with APDNs. APDNs also enable simplified selectivity planning for system protection. The effect of modular operation on microgrids is also studied by using an inertia index. The index not only provides insights on how system performance is affected by modular operation of modular microgrids, but is also used to develop a simpler operation strategy to mitigate the effect of plug and play operations.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Italian center for Astronomical Archives publishing solution: modular and distributed

The Italian center for Astronomical Archives tries to provide astronomical data resources as interoperable services based on IVOA standards. Its VO expertise and knowledge comes from active participation within IVOA and VO at European and international level, with a double-fold goal: learn from the collaboration and provide inputs to the community. The first solution to build an easy to configure and maintain resource publisher conformant to VO standards proved to be too optimistic. For this reason it has been necessary to re-think the architecture with a modular system built around the messaging concept, where each modular component speaks to the other interested parties through a system of broker-managed queues. The first implemented protocol, the Simple Cone Search, shows the messaging task architecture connecting the parametric HTTP interface to the database backend access module, the logging module, and allows multiple cone search resources to be managed together through a configuration manager module. Even if relatively young, it already proved the flexibility required by the overall system when the database backend changed from MySQL to PostgreSQL+PgSphere. Another implementation test has been made to leverage task distribution over multiple servers to serve simultaneously: FITS cubes direct linking, cubes cutout and cubes positional merging. Currently the implementation of the SIA-2.0 standard protocol is ongoing while for TAP we will be adapting the TAPlib library. Alongside these tools a first administration tool (TASMAN) has been developed to ease the build up and maintenance of TAP_SCHEMA-ta including also ObsCore maintenance capability. Future work will be devoted at widening the range of VO protocols covered by the set of available modules, improve the configuration management and develop specific purpose modules common to all the service components.Comment: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2018, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy V, pre-publishing draft proceeding (reduced abstract

Towards Modular Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS)

Objectives: Modular ADCS based on CubeSat flight experience, space heritage hardware and rad hard components for small satellites Project goal: Integration of independent modules based on electronic data sheets (EDS) configuration system Capabilities: Attitude determination and control Boot and self-recovery Plug and play interface to sensor and actuators Fault Detection, Isolation & Recovery (FDIR) Data management and storage External control interfac

Application of ant based routing and intelligent control to telecommunications network management

This thesis investigates the use of novel Artificial Intelligence techniques to improve the control of telecommunications networks. The approaches include the use of Ant-Based Routing and software Agents to encapsulate learning mechanisms to improve the performance of the Ant-System and a highly modular approach to network-node configuration and management into which this routing system can be incorporated. The management system uses intelligent Agents distributed across the nodes of the network to automate the process of network configuration. This is important in the context of increasingly complex network management, which will be accentuated with the introduction of IPv6 and QoS-aware hardware. The proposed novel solution allows an Agent, with a Neural Network based Q-Learning capability, to adapt the response speed of the Ant-System - increasing it to counteract congestion, but reducing it to improve stability otherwise. It has the ability to adapt its strategy and learn new ones for different network topologies. The solution has been shown to improve the performance of the Ant-System, as well as outperform a simple non-learning strategy which was not able to adapt to different networks. This approach has a wide region of applicability to such areas as road-traffic management, and more generally, positioning of learning techniques into complex domains. Both Agent architectures are Subsumption style, blending short-term responses with longer term goal-driven behaviour. It is predicted that this will be an important approach for the application of AI, as it allows modular design of systems in a similar fashion to the frameworks developed for interoperability of telecommunications systems

Robust configurable system design with built-in self-healing

The new generations of SRAM-based FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) devices, built on nanometre technology, are the preferred choice for the implementation of reconfigurable computing platforms. However, their vulnerability to hard and soft errors is a major weakness to robust system design based on FPGAs. In this paper, a novel Built-In Self-Healing (BISH) methodology, based on modular redundancy and on selfreconfiguration, is proposed. A soft microprocessor core implemented in the FPGA is responsible for the management and execution of all the BISH procedures. Fault detection and diagnosis is followed by repairing actions, taking advantage of the self-configuration features. Meanwhile, modular redundancy assures that the system still works correctly. This approach leads to a robust system design able to assure high reliability, availability and data integrity

Capacity management of modular assembly systems

Companies handling large product portfolio often face challenges that stem from market dynamics. Therefore, in production management, efficient planning approaches are required that are able to cope with the variability of the order stream to maintain the desired rate of production. Modular assembly systems offer a flexible approach to react to these changes, however, there is no all-encompassing methodology yet to support long and medium term capacity management of these systems. The paper introduces a novel method for the management of product variety in assembly systems, by applying a new conceptual framework that supports the periodic revision of the capacity allocation and determines the proper system configuration. The framework has a hierarchical structure to support the capacity and production planning of the modular assembly systems both on the long and medium term horizons. On the higher level, a system configuration problem is solved to assign the product families to dedicated, flexible or reconfigurable resources, considering the uncertainty of the demand volumes. The lower level in the hierarchy ensures the cost optimal production planning of the system by optimizing the lot sizes as well as the required number of resources. The efficiency of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through the results of an industrial case study from the automotive sector. © 2017 The Society of Manufacturing Engineer

Computer software configuration management plan for the Honeywell modular automation system

This document provides a Computer Software management plan for a new Honeywell Modular Automation System (MAS) being installed in the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP). This type of system will be used to control new thermal stabilization furnaces, a vertical denitrator calciner, and a pyrolysis furnace

Quattor: Tools and Techniques for the Configuration, Installation and Management of Large-Scale Grid Computing Fabrics

This paper describes the quattor tool suite, a new system for the installation, configuration, and management of operating systems and application software for computing fabrics. At present Unix derivatives such as Linux and Solaris are supported. Quattor is a powerful, portable and modular open source solution that has been shown to scale to thousands of computing nodes and offers a significant reduction in management costs for large computing fabrics. The quattor tool suite includes innovations compared to existing solutions which make it very useful for computing fabrics integrated into grid environments. Evaluations of the tool suite in current large scale computing environments are presented