Optimal design and regulation of residential distributed energy systems

Central power systems predominantly consist of large generators that provide electricity to a broad consumer base through extensive networks. This conventional top-down supply is, however, being challenged by peak demand, energy losses, ageing infrastructure and climate change. Localised distributed energy systems (DES), consisting of clusters of small-scale technologies and various energy services and interactions at the consumer level, are increasingly presented as solutions to these challenges. However, for DES to become viable, a novel cross-disciplinary design approach is still required that encompasses multiple stakeholder interests. This thesis aims to address this need through developing a flexible multi-objective decision-making framework for DES design, from an engineering and regulatory perspective, using mathematical programming techniques. A superstructure mixed-integer linear programming approach is hereto developed to optimise residential energy system designs framed by location-specific parameters and required electricity, heating and cooling demands. Engineering design is optimised in terms of selection, siting and sizing of energy supply alternatives and interactions from a considered pool of options. Multiple stakeholder-driven minimisation objectives are included through Pareto trade-offs, ensuring a system design that is not only competitive (total annualised energy cost) but also introduces security of supply (electrical system unavailability) and environmental benefits (annual CO2 emissions) to the neighbourhood as compared with conventional configurations. DES, furthermore, require an adequate regulatory framework to fit in with conventional systems. Nevertheless, regulation is still lagging behind their technological development. The developed design approach is therefore extended to enable analysis of DES regulatory framework aspects by identifying quantifiable relations, such as type, scale and ownership, between engineering design, organisation and regulation. The framework is applied to a small South Australian neighbourhood to illustrate its capability for DES design analyses and decision-making within conventional power systems generally. The developed approach ensures DES applicability within conventional power systems and their relevance to governing energy regulation

Methodologies for the Evaluation and Mitigation of Distribution Network Risk

Security of supply to customers is a major concern for electricity distribution network operators. This research concentrates in particular on the UK distribution system, and on sub-transmission and extra high voltage networks within that system. It seeks first to understand the principal causes of network risk and consequent loss of supply to customers as a result of faults at these voltage levels. It then develops a suite of methodologies to evaluate that risk, in terms of expected annual cost to the network operator, under a range of different scenarios and for both simple and complex network topologies. The scenarios considered include asset ageing, network automation and increasing utilisation as a consequence of electric vehicles and heat pumps. The methodologies also evaluate possible mitigation options, including active network management, and capital expenditure for both asset replacement and network reinforcement. A composite methodology is also developed, to consider combinations of scenarios and combinations of mitigation strategies. The thesis concludes by considering issues likely to affect the extent and possible increase of network risk over the period 2010-2030

Climatic Risk and Distribution Atlas of European Bumblebees

Bumble bees represent one of the most important groups of pollinators. In addition to their ecological and economic relevance, they are also a highly charismatic group which can help to increase the interest of people in realizing, enjoying and conserving natural systems. However, like most animals, bum- ble bees are sensitive to climate. In this atlas, maps depicting potential risks of climate change for bumble bees are shown together with informative summary statistics, ecological back- ground information and a picture of each European species. Thanks to the EU FP7 project STEP, the authors gathered over one million bumblebee records from all over Europe. Based on these data, they modelled the current climatic niche for almost all European species (56 species) and projected future climatically suitable conditions using three climate change scenarios for the years 2050 and 2100. While under a moderate change scenario only 3 species are projected to be at the verge of extinction by 2100, 14 species are at high risk under an intermediate change scenario. Under a most severe change scenario as many as 25 species are projected to lose almost all of their climatically suitable area, while a total of 53 species (77% of the 69 European species) would lose the main part of their suitable area. Climatic risks for bumblebees can be extremely high, depending on the future development of human society, and the corresponding effects on the climate. Strong mitigation strategies are needed to preserve this important species group and to ensure the sustainable provision of pollination services, to which they considerably contribute

Impact of peer-to-peer trading and flexibility on local energy systems

To meet the 2050 net zero emission targets, energy systems around the globe are being revisited to achieve multi-vector decarbonisation in terms of electricity, transport, heating and cooling. As energy systems become more decentralised and digitised, local energy systems will have greater potential to self-sustain and hence, decrease reliance on fossil-fuelled central generation. While the uptake of electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar and battery systems offer a solution, the increase in electricity demand poses challenges in terms of higher peak demand, imbalance and overloading. Additionally, the current energy market structure prevents these assets in the distribution network from reaching their true techno-economic potential in flexibility services and energy trading. Peer-to-peer energy trading and community-level control algorithms achieve better matching of local demand and supply through the use of transactive energy markets, load shifting and peak shaving techniques. Existing research addresses the challenges of local energy markets and others investigate the effect of increased distributed assets on the network. However, the combined techno-economic effect requires the co-simulation of both market and network levels, coupled with simultaneous system balance, cost and carbon intensity considerations. Using bottom-up coordination and user-centric optimisation, this project investigated the potential of network-aware peer-to-peer trading and community-level control to increase self-sufficiency and self-consumption in energy communities. The techno-economic effects of these strategies are modelled while maintaining user comfort levels and healthy operation of the network and assets. The proposed strategies are evaluated according to their economic benefit, environmental impact and network stress. A case study in Scotland was employed to demonstrate the benefits of peer-to-peer trading and community self-consumption using future projections of demand, generation and storage. Additionally, the concept of energy smart contracts, embedded in blockchains, are proposed and demonstrated to overcome the major challenges of monitoring and contracting. The results indicate benefits for various energy systems stakeholders. Distribution system end-users benefit from lower energy costs while system operators obtain better visibility of the local-level flexibility along with the associated technical challenges in terms of losses, imbalance and loading. From a commercial perspective, community energy companies may utilise this study to inform investment decisions regarding storage, distributed generation and transactive market solutions. Additionally, the insights about the energy smart contracts allow blockchain and relevant technology sectors to recognise the opportunities and challenges of smart contracts and distributed ledger technologies that are specific to the energy sector. On the broader scale, energy system operators, regulators and high-level decision-makers can compare the simulated impact of community-led energy transition on the net zero goals with large-scale top-down initiatives

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

Knowledge Capturing in Design Briefing Process for Requirement Elicitation and Validation

Knowledge capturing and reusing are major processes of knowledge management that deal with the elicitation of valuable knowledge via some techniques and methods for use in actual and further studies, projects, services, or products. The construction industry, as well, adopts and uses some of these concepts to improve various construction processes and stages. From pre-design to building delivery knowledge management principles and briefing frameworks have been implemented across project stakeholders: client, design teams, construction teams, consultants, and facility management teams. At pre-design and design stages, understanding the client’s needs and users’ knowledge are crucial for identifying and articulating the expected requirements and objectives. Due to underperforming results and missed goals and objectives, many projects finish with highly dissatisfied clients and loss of contracts for some organizations. Knowledge capturing has beneficial effects via its principles and methods on requirement elicitation and validation at the briefing stage between user, client and designer. This paper presents the importance and usage of knowledge capturing and reusing in briefing process at pre-design and design stages especially the involvement of client and user, and explores the techniques and technologies that are usable in briefing process for requirement elicitation

An Investigation on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Greenhouse Structures in Antalya

Significant population increase across the world, loss of cultivable land and increasing demand for food put pressure on agriculture. To meet the demand, greenhouses are built, which are, light structures with transparent cladding material in order to provide controlled microclimatic environment proper for plant production. Conceptually, greenhouses are similar with manufacturing buildings where a controlled environment for manufacturing and production have been provided and proper spaces for standardized production processes have been enabled. Parallel with the trends in the world, particularly in southern regions, greenhouse structures have been increasingly constructed and operated in Turkey. A significant number of greenhouses are located at Antalya. The satellite images demonstrated that for over last three decades, there has been a continuous invasion of greenhouses on all cultivable land. There are various researches and attempts for the improvement of greenhouse design and for increasing food production by decreasing required energy consumption. However, the majority of greenhouses in Turkey are very rudimentary structures where capital required for investment is low, but maintenance requirements are high when compared with new generation greenhouse structures. In this research paper, life-long capital requirements for construction and operation of greenhouse buildings in Antalya has been investigated by using benefit-cost analysis study

Foreign investment in the Caribbean : multinational enterprise motivation, investment behaviour and corporate strategy

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is playing an increasingly important role in the economies of many less industrialised countries. The Caribbean, specifically Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad-Tobago are excellent examples of this phenomenon. The increased dependence of these countries on FDI calls to question the attractiveness of their business environment to the foreign investor. This study aims to provide answers to this research question. To this end, it examines the factors that influence the motivations, locational choices and market entry mode of multinational enterprises making investment in these three countries. This study also seeks to ascertain the extent to which these factors are influenced by the timing of the investment decision, the type of FDI (market-seeking, resource-seeking and export-seeking) and the country of origin of the investor. It is also concerned with the factors that influence the initial investment decision as well as the decision to continue operations in the countries. Fourteen hypotheses were advanced from the International Business literature. A triangulation approach to research methodology was employed in the study. The hypotheses were initially tested by means of a mailed questionnaire survey which was administered to 299 executives of multinational enterprises that operate in the three Caribbean countries. The hypotheses were further tested using the qualitative method of a case study approach. Twelve core cases of multinational enterprises operating in the export sectors of the three Caribbean countries were analysed. This study demonstrated the non-applicability of several of the FDI theories to the realities of small, developing economies. These theories were developed largely to explain the behaviour of firms originating in industrialised countries and making investments in these countries. Hence, several did not seem to fully explain the FDI process undertaken in the Caribbean. One notable exception was that of the "Double Diamond" model. The study showed that the "Double Diamond" model is a powerful framework for analysing the business environments of the three Caribbean countries studied. This study also illustrated the importance of government implementing strategies to ensure that the business environment is supportive of the foreign investor. Further, the study suggests that investments need to be made in human resource development, and institutional and infrastructural improvements. It also revealed that the investment incentive package needs to be revised and a nexus created between the government and the foreign investor. Finally, the study suggests that support needs to be given for the development of the locally owned firm

Modelling macroeconomic adjustment with growth in developing economies : the case of India

The aim of this research is to understand the current economic scene and the stabilisation policies in historical perspective, and to survey and develop models for analysing issues of macroeconomic adjustment with growth. The topics have been chosen for their continued relevance in the current policy debates. The standard open economy model on which the Bretton Woods macroeconomics is based takes into account neither the endogeneity and decomposition of aggregate government expenditure or investment nor the price formation process in a developing economy. Further, with the opening up of the Indian economy since 1991, macroeconomic policy analysis needs to be examined in a different analytical framework from the essentially closed economy framework that has hitherto characterised policy discussions in India.T he present study investigates the appropriateness of the Fund-Bank approach to macroeconomic adjustment; modifies and analyses the respective effects of the model in light of the structural constraints in the form of low capital formation in the Indian economy after having disaggregated government expenditure into government consumption and investment expenditures. This thesis models trade, inflation and the determinants of long-run growth considering the role of endogenous growth and the demand factors in growth. The modelling procedure follows the VAR-based time series literature as against the traditional Cowles Commission approach to structural macroeconometric modelling. It estimates a macroeconomic model that incorporates the paradigm underlying the IMF's policy recommendations to developing countries, using Indian time series data from 1950-51 to 1995-96. It discusses structural sensitivities, dynamics and deterministic optimal control. This study investigates the effectiveness of three sets of key macroeconomic policy instruments which are typical in financial liberalisation process - namely, a tight credit policy, a depreciation of domestic currency and, a hike in regulated interest rates. Finally this study solves a multi-target and multi-instrument optimal control problem and finds that the two-target two-instrument problem of a standard policy package is not growth inducive and must target output growth in order to make the adjustment program as growth-oriented. This research has focused on explicitly recognising and analysing the operation of a credit or lending channel in the transmission of monetary policy