Design analysis of potential grid connected floating photovoltaic system in UTHM

Every month Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (UTHM) management pays around RM 1 million for electricity bills. The aim of this project is to explore the feasibility of implementing a grid connected Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) system at the campus of UTHM. There are multiple unutilized water bodies (ponds/lakes) within the campus premises covering a total area of more than 50,000 m2. A 4000 m2 located at the lake near faculty of technical and vocational education (FPTV) is considered of the total available area for the feasibility study. A total of 1372.6 kW can be generated by deploying 335W mono crystalline PV modules with 21% efficiency on a floating mechanism (floaters) on the selected area. The FPV system is then simulated using MATLAB Simulink to observe the performance parameters of the FPV system such as total harmonic distortion (THD), current and voltage waveforms. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software has been used to obtain results such as the net present cost (NPC), cost of operation (COE), CO2 emissions impact and the payback period of the grid connected FPV system. The FPV system provides the lowest cost of energy (LCOE) RM0.418 kWh and a total net present cost (NPC) of RM 52.3 million. This system can decrease CO2 emissions by about 1241 t/yr

Dynamics of Growth, Poverty, and Inequality in Pakistan

The relationship between growth, inequality, and poverty has been a moot point. On the one hand growth is considered central or the best course to reduce poverty (e.g. World Development Report 1990) with the preconditions that access to education, health, and social services are available to all by means of other policies. On the other hand, there is a realisation that growth, inequality, and poverty relations are non-linear, complex, and path dependent in their dynamics. An important point made in this context by Kuznets (1955) was the empirical finding of an inverted U (arch) shape relationship between growth and inequality which suggested that the inequality would increase with growth in the beginning, but will decline at higher levels of growth as the benefits of growth trickle down to lower income strata. This argument has been debated since then in the literature with empirical support gathered for and against this hypothesis. Recent theoretical literature on the issue tries to find the micro-foundations of the dynamical relations between these three variables (see for example, proceedings of the 5th ABCDE Annual (World) Bank Conference on Development Economics). Institutional factors do not change in a few years while they matter in the reduction of poverty as well as in sustaining it at low levels. Hence these relationships are likely to be non-linearity and path dependent, i.e., history matters in the determination of the impact of growth on poverty, of growth on inequality, of inequality on poverty etc. Therefore an understanding of these relationships require knowledge of both the short-run as well as the long-run elasticities of poverty. The method developed by Kakwani (1993) and Kanbur (1987), make use of single survey and provides information on the short-term elasticities but remain silent about longer term relationships between poverty, growth, and inequality.

Trust Development in International Joint Ventures, A case study of Finnish Indian Joint Venture

Most scholars agree that the importance of trust in IJV relationships is a key concern for partner’s success in the intensely competitive and increasingly international modern business environment. This study examines the stage-wise development of trust and presents a model of stage-wise development of trust in IJV life cycle by using single case study. In theoretical part of the study, firstly the nature of IJVs is studied by identifying different stages of IJV life cycle and underlying motives for IJV formation. Secondly, the characteristics of trust has been discussed by shedding light on complexity of the concept trust, trustor and trustee characteristics, levels of trust and, dimensions of trust. Thirdly, the stage-wise development of trust has been discussed and relationship characteristics have been identified to discover their effect on development of trust. For the empirical study, the annual reports of the firm, company publications and, semi-structured face to face interview were used. The main conclusions are the following: trust starts with egoistic self interest motives called calculative based trust and then moves on towards more robust form of identification based trust. Before the IJV actually starts operating, calculative, competence, goodwill and contractual based trust dominate the partner search, selection and contractual agreement stages of IJV. Then knowledge based trust is produced when IJV starts operating. If every thing goes fine up to partner’s expectations and when partners further invest in IJV, then good will trust is strengthened. At the end identification based trust is produced and opposed to IJV, partners take joint steps in future new ventures. Furthermore, findings revealed fourteen relationship characteristics that underlie the dimensions of trust and push the trust from one dimension to other dimension. Findings also reveal that trust is not always incremental; it may decrease and then may be restored in its development process.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

IMPACT OF DATA PRE-PROCESSING TECHNIQUES ON MACHINE LEARNING MODELS

The Volve dataset, which contains the time series values of different sensors that have been used at the Volve drilling site contains many flaws which make it hard for machine learning models to learn from the dataset and provide useful insights and future predictions. Three flaws have been highlighted including missing data, different frequency rates, and too many attributes (high dimensional data). To solve the issues, present in time series data, a data preprocessing pipeline has been proposed which first removes the noise through the rolling mean. Then applies gap analysis to remove the columns whose gaps can not be filled with data imputation methods. After that gap has been filled by the KNN imputer which imputes the missing values in the data. After that data resampling has been applied to make the sampling rate consistent as the time series prediction model takes a constant sampling rate. For hyper-parameter tuning of the resampling method AIC and BIC value has been created on a grid of hyper-parameters. After resampling, top parameters were selected on basis of Pearson correlation, after which AIC and BIC has been used to select the most relevant 3 parameters. These 3 parameters has then be used to train three models that are: RNN + MLP, LSTM + MLP, and LSTM + RNN + MLP. On basis of mean absolute error (MAE) best model has been selected which is RNN + MLP

Structural, Superconducting and Magnetic Properties of La(3-x)R(x)Ni2B2N3 (R = Ce, Pr, Nd)

We report on structural and superconducting properties of La(3-x)R(x)Ni2B2N3 where La is substituted by the magnetic rare-earth elements Ce, Pr, Nd. The compounds Pr3Ni2B2N3 and Nd3Ni2B2N3 are characterized for the first time. Powder X-ray diffraction confirmed all samples R3Ni2B2N3 with R = La, Ce, Pr, Nd and their solid solutions to crystallize in the body centered tetragonal La3Ni2B2N3 structure type. Superconducting and magnetic properties of La(3-x)R(x)Ni2B2N3 were studied by resistivity, specific heat and susceptibility measurements. While La3Ni2B2N3 has a superconducting transition temperature Tc ~ 14 K, substitution of La by Ce, Pr, and Nd leads to magnetic pair breaking and, thus, to a gradual suppression of superconductivity. Pr3Ni2B2N3 exibits no long range magnetic order down to 2 K, Nd3Ni2B2N3 shows ferrimagnetic ordering below T_C = 17 K and a spin reorientation transition to a nearly antiferromagnetic state at 10 K.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, presented at 17. International Conference on Solid Compounds of Transition Elements, Annecy, France; 05.09.2010 - 10.09.201

Powering remote area base stations by renewable energy

Abstract. The number of cellular subscriptions have seen a tremendous growth in the last decade and to provide connectivity for everyone has led to growth in number of base stations (BSs). BSs installed at places where reliable grid power is not available has increased and will continue to increase in the coming years to connect everybody on the globe. Energy and cost efficiency is becoming a criterion of ever increasing importance in the information and communication technology sector. Energy and cost efficiency is especially important for remote areas where providing mobile communication services is inhibited by the economic drawback of low revenue potential. In this thesis, we discuss the role of BS power consumption in the cellular networks in order to investigate approaches to lower the overall power consumption of the cellular network. The thesis covers structure of a BS and the power consumption of its components. Previous works and research approaches proposed to reduce the power consumption of BSs and to what extent they can lower the power requirement are discussed. Reducing the BS power consumption will reduce the operating cost for the networks and ease the deployment of BSs in remote areas. Also discussed are the two key technical features of 5th generation cellular access networks (beam forming through massive multiple input multiple output antenna systems and ultra-lean system design) that are promising in terms of reducing the BS power consumption. Furthermore, we discuss viable sources of renewable energy that can be used to power BSs in the remote areas. An overview of the renewable energy resources that can be used for this purpose (solar and wind energy) and their availability in different regions is discussed. The setups for harnessing solar and wind energy to generate power are presented in this thesis. For different cases requirements of wind and solar energy systems to power the BSs are calculated. Results show that while solar energy alone is a feasible option in regions at low latitude, small solar energy systems of 4–7 kW rated output power can easily power BS during the entire year. But in regions of high latitude using solar energy alone cannot meet the BS power requirement as there are long durations of very low or negligible solar irradiation levels. Furthermore, the energy produced by small wind energy setups at different wind speeds is investigated for the purpose of powering BSs. We discuss the range of windspeed levels for which the energy produced is sufficient to power a BS. Areas with average windspeeds of 5–8 m/s are very suitable for using wind energy as a source of power for BSs. Hybrid energy systems to power BSs and also a few energy storage options to store excess power are also discussed in this thesis