Employee Training and Power Distance: A Case of Employees in Private Higher Education Institutions in Kuala Lumpur

Training is an important function of human resource management. However, prior research about the relation between employee training and power distance mostly focuses on private higher education institutional within Kuala Lumpur, uses a few single case studies or examines only power distance. To address this need, the researcher will provide a theoretical framework which proposes that power distance factors affect training methods and training motivation. Data was gathered through distributed questionnaires answered by 300 respondents from employees in higher education institutional within Kuala Lumpur. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v.16) where descriptive analysis was used to analyze the social demographic variable of the respondent; and the Pearson Correlation Analysis was used to analyze the level of significant relationship between training methods with power distance and training motivation with power distance. Implications for practice and future research are discussed

The Methodology of Thermal Energy Management for Nearly Zero Energy Buildings

Distributed generation causes an unbalanced power grid, which leads to a problem with unpredicted energy surplus balancing. In this vast problem, active cooperation with individual consumers on the energy market is crucial to ensure stability of the power system. Therefore, basing on analysis of power demand for the power system, the control algorithm of Thermal Energy Management System for the net Zero Energy Buildings was developed. One of the possibility of shifting peak power demand is using a building structure as a thermal energy storage. The potential of energy management was confirmed by numerical analysis of two nearly zero energy building models (a heavy and a light construction). A heavy construction building consumes less energy than a light construction but possibilities of obtaining measurable cost savings for user are higher in a case of light construction building. The objective of this study is to show that it is possible to save about 17–28% of the yearly cost of electricity by using the proposed control algorithm. On the contrary, lack of active and conscious usage will result in yearly increase of energy costs at the level of 5–8%. At the same time functioning of the HVAC system according to the proposed algorithm does not significantly effects on thermal comfort

Strategic Study: The Role of Condition-Based Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance of Electrical Reliability

Maintenance is an important performance factor for reliability in an electric power supply company. Maintenance is carried out regularly and intensively to maintain the reliability of electricity distribution. The maintenance strategy most often used is corrective and preventive maintenance, which are carried out by two different methods and with different results. Therefore, results-based research is needed to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the two methods. This research was conducted by exploring the results of interviews with management as an experienced maintenance policymaker with data observations made at PLN as the only power company in Indonesia. The results showed that preventive maintenance or time-based maintenance increased the level of reliability higher than corrective maintenance (condition-based maintenance). This journal was created by conducting a case study on the strategy carried out by management at the Central Java Distribution Unit PLN, Indonesia in carrying out maintenance at distribution substations in Central Java. Keywords: Maintenance; Preventive Maintenance; Condition-based Maintenance; Substation

Effect of Upstream Turbine Tip Speed Variations on Downstream Turbine Performance

AbstractA wake study and combined power output analysis of an array of two model wind turbines is presented. In a wind farm arrangement wakes behind the upstream turbines directly affect the performance and structural loads of the downstream turbines. In this analysis the characteristics of the mean and turbulent wake flow behind an upstream model turbine is directly related to the performance characteristics of a downstream rotor located at three different downstream locations. First the influence of the upstream turbine's tip speed ratio variation from design conditions on the wake flow and the downstream turbine performance is analyzed. Thereafter, also the turbulence intensity level at the wind tunnel inlet is varied from low (laboratory conditions, TI=0.23%) to high (atmospheric conditions, TI=10.0%). Finally, the combined power output of the two turbine array is evaluated for a matrix of the different scenarios.A significant influence of the background turbulence level on the wake recovery is observed, especially for the intermediate separation distance of x/D=5. Controlling the upstream turbine's tip speed ratio away from its design point does not result in a significant increase in combined power output. Only for the case of low turbine separation distance (x/D=3) and low background turbulence the added kinetic energy in the wake can be recovered by the downstream turbine. For higher turbine separation distances and higher background turbulence, the added kinetic energy diffuses into the freestream flow and cannot be recovered anymore. In average, the combined efficiency is observed to increase by about 2.5% with every additional rotor diameter of turbine separation distance. Thus, this analysis suggests an accurate management of the upstream turbine tip speed ratio in dependence of background turbulence and turbine separation distance when optimizing the power output of a wind farm

The Impact of Authority and Agendas in The Management Of Public Authorities: Studying The Relationship Between Public Transportation Authority Boards And Executives

Public authorities are a popular form of quasi-governmental institutions and have been extensively chronicled in regards to effective public service delivery. Authorities are exceptionally popular within the public transportation industry but have slowly lost their fiscal power due to the strengthening of parent governments. This dissertation examines the authority structure in public transportation to understand the linkage between this loss of fiscal power and executive management of public authorities by studying the governing board-executive manager relationship. In particular, this dissertation examines the structure and relationship by studying factors impacting relationships and connections between deceased fiscal power and the members recruited to serve on authority boards. This exploratory study examines five public transportation authorities in the cities of Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga and Jackson, Tennessee in addition to the city of Lexington, Kentucky. Utilizing qualitative interviews this research collected primary source, subjective data on perspectives and opinions of authority executives and board members related to fiscal power, policy preferences, representation and executive support. Findings suggest a distinct connection between fiscal power and the types of board members appointed to serve on public authority boards. In the case of public transportation, higher fiscal power saw higher-level board members with less inclination for executive micromanagement. Lower fiscal authority had the effect of attracting low- level members with service-related agendas falling under executive authority with more opportunity for micromanagement and conflict. Unique was the lack of conflict despite increasing occasion for encroachment on executive authority; this was due to executive management of board agendas to create positive relationships with strong support. The study also revealed boards place tremendous value on representation and therefore translate experiences, expertise and personal agendas to board activities and decisions. Finally this study argued that James Svara’s duality-dichotomy model of local government (1985; 1989b; 1990) provides understanding of public authorities due to parallels with the council-manager system. The research indicates that first, the study is applicable to public authorities and second, board-executive relationships offer a new contextual dimension along board member orientations toward policy activities, advisory functions and community representation

A fault-tolerant last level cache for CMPs operating at ultra-low voltage

Voltage scaling to values near the threshold voltage is a promising technique to hold off the many-core power wall. However, as voltage decreases, some SRAM cells are unable to operate reliably and show a behavior consistent with a hard fault. Block disabling is a micro-architectural technique that allows low-voltage operation by deactivating faulty cache entries, at the expense of reducing the effective cache capacity. In the case of the last-level cache, this capacity reduction leads to an increase in off-chip memory accesses, diminishing the overall energy benefit of reducing the voltage supply. In this work, we exploit the reuse locality and the intrinsic redundancy of multi-level inclusive hierarchies to enhance the performance of block disabling with negligible cost. The proposed fault-aware last-level cache management policy maps critical blocks, those not present in private caches and with a higher probability of being reused, to active cache entries. Our evaluation shows that this fault-aware management results in up to 37.3% and 54.2% fewer misses per kilo instruction (MPKI) than block disabling for multiprogrammed and parallel workloads, respectively. This translates to performance enhancements of up to 13% and 34.6% for multiprogrammed and parallel workloads, respectively.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Determination of the Cascade Reservoir Operation for Optimal Firm-Energy Using Genetic Algorithms

Abstract - Indonesia today face a new paradigm in water management where aim to apply integrated water resources management has become unavoidable task in purpose of achieving greater level of effectiveness and efficiency. On of most interesting case study is the case of Citarum river, one of the most potential river for water supply in West Java, Indonesia. Alongside the river, Saguling, Cirata and Djuanda Reservoirs had been constructed in series/cascade. Saguling and Cirata reservoirs are particularly operated for hydroelectric power and Djuanda is multipurpose reservoir mainly operated for irrigation and contribute domestic water supply for Jakarta (capital city of Indonesia). Basically all reservoirs are relying on same resources, therefore this condition has considered addressing management and operational problem. Therefore, an approach toward new management and operation system are urgently required in order to achieve the effective and efficient output and to avoid conflicts of water used. This study aims to obtain energy production from Citarum Cascade Reservoir System using Genetic Algorithms optimization with the objective function to maximize firm-energy. Firm-energy is the minimum energy requirements must be available in a certain time period. Then, the result obtained by using the energy produced by GA is compared to the conventional searching technique of Non-Linier Programming (NLP). The GA derived operating curves reveal the higher energy and firm-energy than NLP model. Keywords: Genetic Algorithms, Citarum Cascade Reservoir, Firm-Energy, Electrical Energ