Wind Powering America Initiative: The Wind and Water Power Program (WWPP)

The U.S. Department of Energy\u27s Wind Powering America initiative engages in technology market acceptance, barrier reduction, and technology deployment support activities. This fact sheet outlines ways in which the Wind Powering America team works to reduce barriers to appropriate wind energy deployment, primarily by focusing on six program areas: workforce development, communications and outreach, stakeholder analysis and resource assessment, wind technology technical support, wind power for Native Americans, and federal sector support and collaboration

Energy-efficiency for MISO-OFDMA based user-relay assisted cellular networks

The concept of improving energy-efficiency (EE) without sacrificing the service quality has become important nowadays. The combination of orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) multi-antenna transmission technology and relaying is one of the key technologies to deliver the promise of reliable and high-data-rate coverage in the most cost-effective manner. In this paper, EE is studied for the downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO)-OFDMA based user-relay assisted cellular networks. EE maximization is formulated for decode and forward (DF) relaying scheme with the consideration of both transmit and circuit power consumption as well as the data rate requirements for the mobile users. The quality of-service (QoS)-constrained EE maximization, which is defined for multi-carrier, multi-user, multi-relay and multi-antenna networks, is a non-convex and combinatorial problem so it is hard to tackle. To solve this difficult problem, a radio resource management (RRM) algorithm that solves the subcarrier allocation, mode selection and power allocation separately is proposed. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by numerical results for different system parameter

Introducing Energy Efficiency into SQALE

Energy Efficiency is becoming a key factor in software development, given the sharp growth of IT systems and their impact on worldwide energy consumption. We do believe that a quality process infrastructure should be able to consider the Energy Efficiency of a system since its early development: for this reason we propose to introduce Energy Efficiency into the existing quality models. We selected the SQALE model and we tailored it inserting Energy Efficiency as a sub-characteristic of efficiency. We also propose a set of six source code specific requirements for the Java language starting from guidelines currently suggested in the literature. We experienced two major challenges: the identification of measurable, automatically detectable requirements, and the lack of empirical validation on the guidelines currently present in the literature and in the industrial state of the practice as well. We describe an experiment plan to validate the six requirements and evaluate the impact of their violation on Energy Efficiency, which has been partially proved by preliminary results on C code. Having Energy Efficiency in a quality model and well verified code requirements to measure it, will enable a quality process that precisely assesses and monitors the impact of software on energy consumptio

Energy efficiency and residential values: a changing European landscape

The aim of this insight paper is to provide valuers and other interested stakeholders with an overview of the impact of energy efficiency on the value of residential property in Europe, whether that housing stock is owner-occupied, rented within the private sector or social housing. It considers the role of the valuer and how, through their data collection and reporting processes, they can play a part in promoting a more energy efficient housing stock. To achieve these aims, it reviews the context within which energy efficiency is rising up the European regulatory agenda and the impact that this is having on value drivers. Through a review of academic literature and consideration of the wider context, it provides a set of recommendations for valuers of residential properties to assist them with considering how energy efficiency is beginning to influence property values. This understanding can then enhance their advice to client

Aircraft energy efficiency. Overview

Six advanced technology development projects that could cut fuel consumption of future civil air transports by as much as 50 percent are highlighted. These include improved engine components; better engine design; thin short blades for turboprop aircaft; using composite primary structures for weight reduction; the use of supercritical wings, higher aspect ratio, and winglets for improved aerodynamics; active controls; and laminar flow control. The time span of each of the six efforts and NASA's expected expenditures are also discussed

Improving the Energy Efficiency of Mobile Terminals Using Dynamic Multilevel Priority Packet Scheduling in Cooperative Communication

Cooperative communication is an efficient method for reducing the energy consumption of mobile terminal in wireless cellular network. However, it is hard to implement due to the lack of motivations for the Mobile terminals to cooperate. For this scenario as the benchmark case, where the information of the helping mobile terminals such as the channel and battery conditions is completely known by the source node terminal, the problem is formulated as a relay selection problem. Efficient algorithms based on dichotomous search and alternative optimizations are proposed to solve the problem for the cases of split and non-split data at the source MT, respectively. The cooperative communications scheme with pricing mechanism can decrease both the battery outages and communications for the mobile node, and can also increase the average battery level during the mobile terminals operation. In this paper, we state a Dynamic Multilevel Priority (DMP) packet scheduling scheme. In the proposed system, each node, except those which are at the last level of the virtual hierarchy in the zone based topology of Wireless sensor network , have three levels of priority queues. Real-time packets are placed in the highest-priority queue and can preempt data packets in other queues. Non-real-time packets are placed in other two queues based on a certain threshold of their estimated processing time. Leaf nodes will have two queues for real-time and non-real-time data packets since they do not receive data from other nodes and so this reduce end to- end delay. The performance of the proposed Dynamic multilevel priority packet scheduling scheme through simulations for real-time and non-real-time data packet. Simulation results shows that the DMP packet scheduling scheme outperforms conventional schemes interms of average data waiting time and end-to-end delay

Monitoring of the “Energiewende” – energy efficiency indicators for Germany

The increasing number of energy and climate targets both at national and international level induces a rising demand for regular monitoring. In this paper, we analyse the possibilities and limits of using energy efficiency indicators as a tool for monitoring these targets. We refer to the energy efficiency targets of the German “Energiewende” and calculate and discuss several energy efficiency indicators for Germany both at the level of the overall economy and the main energy consumption sectors. We make use of the energy efficiency indicator toolbox that we have developed within the ODYSSEE database in recent years and find that there is still a considerable gap to close to achieve the overall energy efficiency targets in Germany by 2020. We also show that progress in energy efficiency slowed down between 2008 and 2012, i.e. compared to the base year of most of the German energy efficiency targets and find that energy efficiency progress in the industrial sector during the last decade has been especially slow. We conclude that improvements in energy efficiency have to speed up considerably in order to achieve the targets for 2020. Although the use of energy efficiency indicators is limited by data constraints and some methodological problems, these indicators give a deep insight into the factors determining energy consumption and can therefore complement the official monitoring process of the German “Energiewende” which only relies on highly aggregated indicators for energy efficiency

Energy efficiency and the rebound effect

In recent years the argument that rebound effects, triggered by economy-wide price and income effects, may partially or wholly offset reductions in energy consumption expected from energy efficiency improvements has gained a great deal of attention in both academic and policy arenas. In the UK, a report by the House of Lords (2005) raised the question as to whether this argument provides an explanation as to why total energy consumption in the UK hasn’t fallen in line with increased energy efficiency. In response, the UK Research Councils have funded research, first through the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and now at the University of Strathclyde to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in the UK economy