Neck shrivel in European plum is caused by cuticular microcracks, resulting from rapid lateral expansion of the neck late in development

Susceptibility to the commercially important fruit disorder ‘neck shrivel’ differs among European plum cultivars. Radial cuticular microcracking occurs in the neck regions of susceptible cultivars, but not in non-susceptible ones, so would seem to be causal. However, the reason for the microcracking is unknown. The objective was to identify potential relationships between fruit growth pattern and microcracking incidence in the neck (proximal) and stylar (distal) ends of selected shrivel-susceptible and non-susceptible cultivars. Growth analysis revealed two allometric categories: The first category, the ‘narrow-neck’ cultivars, showed hypoallometric growth in the neck region (i.e., slower growth than in the region of maximum diameter) during early development (stages I + II). Later (during stage III) the neck region was ‘filled out’ by hyperallometric growth (i.e., faster than in the region of maximum diameter). The second category, the ‘broad-neck’ cultivars, had more symmetrical, allometric growth (all regions grew equally fast) throughout development. The narrow-neck cultivars exhibited extensive radial cuticular microcracking in the neck region, but little microcracking in the stylar region. In contrast, the broad-neck cultivars exhibited little microcracking overall, with no difference between the neck and stylar regions. Across all cultivars, a positive relationship was obtained for the level of microcracking in the neck region and the difference in allometric growth ratios between stage III and stages I + II. There were no similar relationships for the stylar region. The results demonstrate that accelerated stage III neck growth in the narrow-neck plum cultivars is associated with more microcracking and thus with more shrivel

Multi-time scale control of demand flexibility in smart distribution networks

This paper presents a multi-timescale control strategy to deploy electric vehicle (EV) demand flexibility for simultaneously providing power balancing, grid congestion management, and economic benefits to participating actors. First, an EV charging problem is investigated from consumer, aggregator, and distribution system operator’s perspectives. A hierarchical control architecture (HCA) comprising scheduling, coordinative, and adaptive layers is then designed to realize their coordinative goal. This is realized by integrating multi-time scale controls that work from a day-ahead scheduling up to real-time adaptive control. The performance of the developed method is investigated with high EV penetration in a typical residential distribution grid. The simulation results demonstrate that HCA efficiently utilizes demand flexibility stemming from EVs to solve grid unbalancing and congestions with simultaneous maximization of economic benefits to the participating actors. This is ensured by enabling EV participation in day-ahead, balancing, and regulation markets. For the given network configuration and pricing structure, HCA ensures the EV owners to get paid up to five times the cost they were paying without control

Virtual Inertia: Current Trends and Future Directions

The modern power system is progressing from a synchronous machine-based system towards an inverter-dominated system, with large-scale penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) like wind and photovoltaics. RES units today represent a major share of the generation, and the traditional approach of integrating them as grid following units can lead to frequency instability. Many researchers have pointed towards using inverters with virtual inertia control algorithms so that they appear as synchronous generators to the grid, maintaining and enhancing system stability. This paper presents a literature review of the current state-of-the-art of virtual inertia implementation techniques, and explores potential research directions and challenges. The major virtual inertia topologies are compared and classified. Through literature review and simulations of some selected topologies it has been shown that similar inertial response can be achieved by relating the parameters of these topologies through time constants and inertia constants, although the exact frequency dynamics may vary slightly. The suitability of a topology depends on system control architecture and desired level of detail in replication of the dynamics of synchronous generators. A discussion on the challenges and research directions points out several research needs, especially for systems level integration of virtual inertia systems

Optimal Scheduling of Electrolyzer in Power Market with Dynamic Prices

Optimal scheduling of hydrogen production in dynamic pricing power market can maximize the profit of hydrogen producer; however, it highly depends on the accurate forecast of hydrogen consumption. In this paper, we propose a deep leaning based forecasting approach for predicting hydrogen consumption of fuel cell vehicles in future taxi industry. The cost of hydrogen production is minimized by utilizing the proposed forecasting tool to reduce the hydrogen produced during high cost on-peak hours and guide hydrogen producer to store sufficient hydrogen during low cost off-peak hours

Evaluation of Phytochemical, Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activities of Selected Medicinal Plants

Medicinal plants are important reservoirs of bioactive compounds that need to be explored systematically. Because of their chemical diversity, natural products provide limitless possibilities for new drug discovery. This study aimed to investigate the biochemical properties of crude extracts from fifteen Nepalese medicinal plants. The total phenolic contents (TPC), total flavonoid contents (TFC), and antioxidant activity were evaluated through a colorimetric approach while the antibacterial activities were studied through the measurement of the zone of inhibition (ZoI) by agar well diffusion method along with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) by broth dilution method. The methanolic extracts of Acacia catechu and Eupoterium adenophorum showed the highest TPC (55.21 ± 11.09 mg GAE/gm) and TFC (10.23 ± 1.07 mg QE/gm) among the studied plant extracts. Acacia catechu showed effective antioxidant properties with an IC50 value of 1.3 μg/mL, followed by extracts of Myrica esculenta, Syzygium cumini, and Mangifera indica. Morus australis exhibited antibacterial activity against Klebsiella pneumoniae (ZoI: 25mm, MIC: 0.012 mg/mL), Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 (ZoI: 22 mm, MIC: 0.012 mg/mL), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ZoI; 20 mm, MIC: 0.05 mg/mL), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (ZoI: 19 mm, MIC: 0.19 mg/mL). Morus australis extract showed a broad-spectrum antibacterial activity, followed by Eclipta prostrata, and Hypericum cordifolium. Future study is recommended to explore secondary metabolites of those medicinal plants to uncover further clinical efficacy

Photovoltaic hosting capacity of feeders with reactive power control and tap changers

This paper finds photovoltaic (PV) hosting capacity of power distribution network considering a number of PV injection nodes, reactive power support from PVs, and control of load tap changers (LTCs). In the developed method, several minute by minute simulations are run based on randomly chosen PV injection nodes, daily PV output profiles, and daily load profiles from a pool of high-resolution realistic data set. The simulation setup is built using OpenDSS and MATLAB. The performance of the proposed method is investigated in the IEEE 123-node distribution feeder for multiple scenarios. The case studies are performed particularly for one, two, five, and ten PV injection nodes looking at the maximum voltage deviations. Case studies show that the PV hosting capacity of the 123-node feeder greatly differs with the number of PV injection nodes. We have observed that distributed PVs increase hosting capacity of the feeders compared to large PVs at few nodes. We have also observed that the PV hosting capacity increases with reactive power support and with the control of LTCs

Optimal coordinated EV charging with reactive power support in constrained distribution grids

Electric vehicle (EV) charging/discharging can take place in any P-Q quadrants, which means EVs could support reactive power to the grid while charging the battery. In controlled charging schemes, distribution system operator (DSO) coordinates with the charging of EV fleets to ensure grid\u27s operating constraints are not violated. In fact, this refers to DSO setting upper bounds on power limits for EV charging. In this work, we demonstrate that if EVs inject reactive power into the grid while charging, DSO could issue higher upper bounds on the active power limits for the EVs for the same set of grid constraints. We demonstrate the concept in a 33-node test feeder with 1,500 EVs. Case studies show that in constrained distribution grids, coordinated charging significantly reduces the average cost of EV charging if the charging takes place in the fourth P-Q quadrant compared to charging with unity power factor

Multi-Time Scale Control of Demand Flexibility in Smart Distribution Networks

This paper presents a multi-timescale control strategy to deploy electric vehicle (EV) demand flexibility for simultaneously providing power balancing, grid congestion management, and economic benefits to participating actors. First, an EV charging problem is investigated from consumer, aggregator, and distribution system operator’s perspectives. A hierarchical control architecture (HCA) comprising scheduling, coordinative, and adaptive layers is then designed to realize their coordinative goal. This is realized by integrating multi-time scale controls that work from a day-ahead scheduling up to real-time adaptive control. The performance of the developed method is investigated with high EV penetration in a typical residential distribution grid. The simulation results demonstrate that HCA efficiently utilizes demand flexibility stemming from EVs to solve grid unbalancing and congestions with simultaneous maximization of economic benefits to the participating actors. This is ensured by enabling EV participation in day-ahead, balancing, and regulation markets. For the given network configuration and pricing structure, HCA ensures the EV owners to get paid up to five times the cost they were paying without control

Comparative Study of Active Power Curtailment Methods of PVs for Preventing Overvoltage on Distribution Feeders

© 2018 IEEE. Overvoltage is one of the major issues on distribution grids with high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation. Overvoltage could be prevented through the control of active/reactive power of PVs. However, given the high R/X ratio of low voltage feeders, voltage control by using reactive power would not be as effective as using active power. Therefore, active power curtailment (APC) of PVs, though not desirable, becomes necessary at times to prevent the overvoltage issues. Existing literature is rich in centralized and droop-based methods for APC and/or reactive power control of PVs to prevent overvoltage issues. In this context, this paper revisits the most popular existing methods, and evaluates the performance of droop-based and centralized methods using a typical North American 240 V low voltage feeder with 24 residential homes. In this work, our key findings are: a) droop-based methods provided conservative solutions or did not eliminate the overvoltages completely, b) power flow sensitivity based droop approach led to 13% more curtailment than the centralized approaches, c) centralized approach had 40% less energy curtailed compared with standard droop while no overvoltages were observed, and d) operating PVs at non-unity power factor in centralized approach led to 5% less energy curtailment

Multi-time-scale energy management of distributed energy resources in active distribution grids

Recently, power system is undergoing two major transformations: (1) continuous displacement of conventional generating sources by renewables and (2) increased deployment of new loads in the existing electric grids due to electrification of heating, gas, and transportation sectors. These transformations impose various control and operational complexities, congest existing grids, and might negatively impact the power balancing by creating large and random fluctuations. To address the issues, an integrated control of flexible resources and distributed generations is required. This is addressed in this chapter using an integrated multi-time-scale energy management approach for active distribution networks. First, a day-ahead predictive dispatch is done using forecasted loads/generations, which is then adjusted using intraday control in order to compensate uncertainties stemming from forecast errors and/or unexpected grid events. Finally, an adaptive power management is performed near actual operation for constraint violations management in real time. The performance of the proposed methods is demonstrated using data from a real-world low-voltage distribution feeder in a simulation model set up in a DIgSILENT-MATLAB co-simulation environment. The proposed method not only maximizes deployment of flexibility from spatially distributed resources, but also enable single flexible resource to provide multiple grid support functionalities.</p