382 research outputs found
Evaluation and improvement of energy flexibility and performance of building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems
The foreseen reduction of available fossil fuels, the continued increase in global energy demand, and the irrefutable evidence of climate change, along with the implementation of a global commitment to achieve a net-zero emissions target, have greatly sharpened commercial interest in using renewable energy resources (RER). However, the high penetration of RER-based stochastic power generation systems has resulted in a significant requirement for increased flexibility on the demand side that can allow buildings to adapt to increasingly dynamic energy supply conditions to support power grid operation and optimization. Failure to adapt may carry serious electrical blackouts and can compromise the safety of the supply side.
The building sector accounts for a substantial amount of global energy usage and offers great opportunities for energy flexibility. Building energy flexibility is an important and emerging concept in the modern energy landscape, which can support the sustainable transition of the power sector. Building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are one of the leading energy consumers in buildings, which can be used as a key flexible source. The HVAC systems with integrated thermal energy storage (TES) can further enhance building energy flexibility.
This thesis contributes to the evolving field of demand flexibility and introduces methodologies to evaluate and improve energy flexibility and performance of building HVAC systems
Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future
In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed.
First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the
meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies
are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and
water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to
separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted
that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or
disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better
world. Second, several believed-untouchable hot spots are highlighted to
emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited
to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii)
Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and
iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional
social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature
of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and
software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products,
technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management
and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is
highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same
technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on
the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an
interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and
Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that
the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in
calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.Comment: 10 pages. Preprint/Accepted of a paper submitted to the ICT4S
Conferenc
Data Driven Chiller Plant Energy Optimization with Domain Knowledge
Refrigeration and chiller optimization is an important and well studied topic
in mechanical engineering, mostly taking advantage of physical models, designed
on top of over-simplified assumptions, over the equipments. Conventional
optimization techniques using physical models make decisions of online
parameter tuning, based on very limited information of hardware specifications
and external conditions, e.g., outdoor weather. In recent years, new generation
of sensors is becoming essential part of new chiller plants, for the first time
allowing the system administrators to continuously monitor the running status
of all equipments in a timely and accurate way. The explosive growth of data
flowing to databases, driven by the increasing analytical power by machine
learning and data mining, unveils new possibilities of data-driven approaches
for real-time chiller plant optimization. This paper presents our research and
industrial experience on the adoption of data models and optimizations on
chiller plant and discusses the lessons learnt from our practice on real world
plants. Instead of employing complex machine learning models, we emphasize the
incorporation of appropriate domain knowledge into data analysis tools, which
turns out to be the key performance improver over state-of-the-art deep
learning techniques by a significant margin. Our empirical evaluation on a real
world chiller plant achieves savings by more than 7% on daily power
consumption.Comment: CIKM2017. Proceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on
Information and Knowledge Management. 201
Improving Energy Efficiency through Data-Driven Modeling, Simulation and Optimization
In October 2014, the EU leaders agreed upon three key targets for the year 2030: a reduction by at least 40% in greenhouse gas emissions, savings of at least 27% for renewable energy, and improvements by at least 27% in energy efficiency. The increase in computational power combined with advanced modeling and simulation tools makes it possible to derive new technological solutions that can enhance the energy efficiency of systems and that can reduce the ecological footprint. This book compiles 10 novel research works from a Special Issue that was focused on data-driven approaches, machine learning, or artificial intelligence for the modeling, simulation, and optimization of energy systems
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