Plan a dashboard for energy measuring, improve overview of energy consumption, and increase energy recovery​

This thesis is written on behalf of a manufacturing company, focusing on energy consumption, recovery, and management. ​ The energy sector continuously changes through carbon emission targets and laws demanding action from companies in the transition to renewable energy resources. Therefore, companies target more innovative manufacturing solutions by measuring, controlling, and visualising energy consumption. Furthermore, the unstable and fluctuating energy situation, rising energy costs, and customers demanding sustainably produced products have enhanced the interest in energy questions at the company. Accordingly, the desire is to improve the overview of energy consumption, improve energy efficiency, and enable energy recovery through storage. Currently, energy measurements are limited to monthly reports based on historical data. This thesis attempts to overcome this by presenting a system providing all stakeholders access to real-time operational data. The energy management system with a dashboard visualising energy consumption and performance indicators could be used to plan production cycles, adjust product prices, and perform predictive maintenance more accurately. The method used in this thesis is qualitative research through interviews with stakeholders at the company. Based on the interview results, a dashboard design is developed through three different layouts, customised for all stakeholder groups. In addition, the proposed energy management system enables visualising collected real-time data in dashboards. The theoretical framework in this thesis is a literature review of scientific research in energy management, dashboard design, energy recovery, and storage. Previous research in energy management presents several implemented technologies improving efficiency, reliability, and stability in the energy supply. The thesis result includes an interview analysis, an energy management system, a dashboard design, and an energy storage system. The interview gives comprehensive knowledge to identify significant performance measures, experience, and interest from stakeholders in the field. The resulting energy management system is an IoT system with collecting assets, an edge platform, a database, and dashboard visualisation. The proposed energy storage system uses thermal energy storage technology with sand as a storage medium. This solution could be driven by renewable energy resources as primary energy resources and implemented to store recovered energy as secondary energy resources improving energy efficiency. In conclusion, this thesis proves that an energy management system with a dashboard visualising collected energy data could be implemented. Furthermore, this thesis concludes that involved stakeholders effectively provide knowledge and experience in the development process of customised dashboard designs

Self-Sustaining Caching Stations: Towards Cost-Effective 5G-Enabled Vehicular Networks

In this article, we investigate the cost-effective 5G-enabled vehicular networks to support emerging vehicular applications, such as autonomous driving, in-car infotainment and location-based road services. To this end, self-sustaining caching stations (SCSs) are introduced to liberate on-road base stations from the constraints of power lines and wired backhauls. Specifically, the cache-enabled SCSs are powered by renewable energy and connected to core networks through wireless backhauls, which can realize "drop-and-play" deployment, green operation, and low-latency services. With SCSs integrated, a 5G-enabled heterogeneous vehicular networking architecture is further proposed, where SCSs are deployed along roadside for traffic offloading while conventional macro base stations (MBSs) provide ubiquitous coverage to vehicles. In addition, a hierarchical network management framework is designed to deal with high dynamics in vehicular traffic and renewable energy, where content caching, energy management and traffic steering are jointly investigated to optimize the service capability of SCSs with balanced power demand and supply in different time scales. Case studies are provided to illustrate SCS deployment and operation designs, and some open research issues are also discussed.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazine, to appea

2011 Strategic roadmap for Australian research infrastructure

The 2011 Roadmap articulates the priority research infrastructure areas of a national scale (capability areas) to further develop Australia’s research capacity and improve innovation and research outcomes over the next five to ten years. The capability areas have been identified through considered analysis of input provided by stakeholders, in conjunction with specialist advice from Expert Working Groups   It is intended the Strategic Framework will provide a high-level policy framework, which will include principles to guide the development of policy advice and the design of programs related to the funding of research infrastructure by the Australian Government. Roadmapping has been identified in the Strategic Framework Discussion Paper as the most appropriate prioritisation mechanism for national, collaborative research infrastructure. The strategic identification of Capability areas through a consultative roadmapping process was also validated in the report of the 2010 NCRIS Evaluation. The 2011 Roadmap is primarily concerned with medium to large-scale research infrastructure. However, any landmark infrastructure (typically involving an investment in excess of $100 million over five years from the Australian Government) requirements identified in this process will be noted. NRIC has also developed a ‘Process to identify and prioritise Australian Government landmark research infrastructure investments’ which is currently under consideration by the government as part of broader deliberations relating to research infrastructure. NRIC will have strategic oversight of the development of the 2011 Roadmap as part of its overall policy view of research infrastructure