Combined vehicle to building (V2B) and vehicle to home (V2H) strategy to increase electric vehicle market share

Buildings are one of the most important energy consumers in modern economy countries. The massive use of electrical vehicles could help decarbonizing the economy by using electricity produced using renewable energy. Combined use of Vehicle to Grid (V2G), Vehicle to Home (V2H) and Vehicle to Building (V2B) is one of the strategies to increase the number of electrical vehicles, ensure a better coupling between energy generation and consumption, reducing peak demand and increasing global energy efficiency. This research presents a novel approach of combined use of V2H and V2B that can be applied in different scenarios such as when the building workers own EVs, company shared car fleets or leasing, among others. Recharged energy at workers homes during night hours is delivered in the building during daily working hours lowering peak demand, reducing carbon intensity and energy cost savings. The results show that the methodology is feasible and can be extended to other cases and greatly contribute to better energy efficiency, reduces peak demand in buildings and increase electric vehicles penetration in transport to workplaces

Dynamic Extended Exergy Analysis of Photon Enhanced Thermionic Emitter Based Electricity Generation

Exergy is the very useful tool to evaluate energy systems besides energy analysis based on the first law of the thermodynamics. In contrast to energy, exergy is not conserved and always decreases. There are many types of exergy analysis involving exergoeconomic, exergoenvironmental, advanced exergy-based analyses, extended exergy analysis etc. In this study, an application of the extended exergy analysis is performed. In extended exergy analysis, not only energy related system is considered but also all materials and energy flows’ exergy, non-energetic and immaterial fluxes (capital, labor and environmental impact) are turned into exergy equivalent values and utilized in the analysis, which are calculating for local econometric and social data. These methods can be applied to societies or energy based or non-energy-based system. In this study, dynamic exergy analysis and extended exergy application of electricity generation from photon enhanced thermionic emitter is conducted. According to results, some important values can be listed as; extended exergy destruction, conventional based exergy destruction, extended exergy efficiency, conventional exergy efficiency, extended sustainability ratio, conventional sustainability ratio, extended exergy-based depletion ratio and conventional exergy-based depletion ratio are 542106006 MJ, 542084601 MJ, 0.01094, 0.01094, 1.011, 1.011, 0.978 and 0.989 respectively

An expert judgement approach to determine measures to remove institutional barriers and economic non-market failures that restrict photovoltaic self-consumption deployment in Spain

[EN] Despite the Spanish privileged geographical location and business leadership in the renewable energy field, currently is can be observed that the solar photovoltaic generation, electric self-consumption systems and net-metering policies deployment is much lower than it can be observed in other countries, even with lower energy sources for self-consumption. Energy policy experts assess as main reason the absence of a stable regulatory framework and the existence of clear disincentives. These disincentives are based on several economic non-market failures and institutional barriers. One key factor has proven to be the regulatory uncertainty created mainly by the recent national most relevant ministerial orders regarding energy generation and consumption, which suggests that, de facto, the regulatory framework is currently still under development. This paper includes first a brief but deep description of the prosumers penetration existing scenario in Spain, and then it focuses on feasible strategies to accelerate higher solar photovoltaic and self-consumption growth rates in Spain. Then, new policy measures to eliminate, or at least, mitigate, current barriers to their deployment are proposed and discussed. It is concluded that it results mandatory the urgent modernization of the energy regulatory framework promoting an active role for distributed PV generation which could have a significant positive impact in the voltage control and frequency regulation in distribution networks, among other advantages.[ES] A pesar de la privilegiada situación geográfica española y del liderazgo empresarial en el campo de las energías renovables, en la actualidad se observa que el despliegue de la generación solar fotovoltaica, de los sistemas de autoconsumo eléctrico y de las políticas de net-metering es muy inferior al que se observa en otros países, incluso con menores fuentes de energía para el autoconsumo. Los expertos en política energética valoran como razón principal la ausencia de un marco regulatorio estable y la existencia de claros desincentivos. Estos desincentivos se basan en varios fallos económicos ajenos al mercado y en barreras institucionales. Un factor clave ha resultado ser la incertidumbre regulatoria creada principalmente por las recientes órdenes ministeriales nacionales más relevantes en materia de generación y consumo de energía, lo que sugiere que, de facto, el marco regulador se encuentra actualmente en fase de desarrollo. Este trabajo incluye en primer lugar una breve pero profunda descripción del escenario de penetración de prosumidores existente en España, y a continuación se centra en las estrategias viables para acelerar mayores tasas de crecimiento de la energía solar fotovoltaica y el autoconsumo en España. A continuación, se proponen y discuten nuevas medidas políticas para eliminar, o al menos, mitigar, las barreras actuales a su despliegue. Se concluye que resulta obligatoria la urgente modernización del marco regulatorio energético promoviendo un papel activo para la generación fotovoltaica distribuida que podría tener un impacto positivo significativo en el control de la tensión y la regulación de la frecuencia en las redes de distribución.S

Microgrids with energy storage systems as a means to increase power resilience: An application to office buildings

[EN] This work describes a methodology to quantify the benefits from both a business-related and energy resilience perspectives provided by a microgrid based on photovoltaic solar energy and electrochemical energy storage integrated in large buildings, such as office buildings not open to the general public, which is presented as case study. First it has been identified how, by using distributed renewable energy sources (in particular, photovoltaic solar energy) and electrochemical energy storage systems, the life-cycle cost of the energy in a microgrid connected to the electrical network can be reduced significantly. As novel approach, it has been evaluated how this microgrid design can increase the resilience of a power customer supply, quantified as the time period the microgrid is able to feed an electrical consumer at an outage, which it results of great importance for large office buildings that are used to have several critical loads, such as data servers and data processing centers. It was found that, by adding photovoltaic solar energy and electrochemical storage, it is possible to extend the power resilience of this sort of power customers achieving an average survival time to a power cut of 4 h thanks to the proposed solar photovoltaic and energy storage system. Then, the microgrid could save $112,410 in energy over the 20-year life cycle of the facility, while increasing the amount of time it can survive a power outage. The proposed methodology presented in this paper provides a model that can be applied to other case studies and scenarios where an alternative to the classic diesel-based emergency supply systems are needed.[ES] Este trabajo describe una metodología para cuantificar los beneficios, tanto desde el punto de vista empresarial como de la resiliencia energética, que proporciona una microrred basada en energía solar fotovoltaica y almacenamiento electroquímico de energía integrada en grandes edificios, como edificios de oficinas no abiertos al público en general, que se presenta como caso de estudio. En primer lugar se ha identificado cómo, mediante el uso de fuentes de energía renovables distribuidas (en particular, energía solar fotovoltaica) y sistemas de almacenamiento electroquímico de energía, se puede reducir significativamente el coste del ciclo de vida de la energía en una microrred conectada a la red eléctrica. Como enfoque novedoso, se ha evaluado cómo este diseño de microrred puede aumentar la resiliencia del suministro de un cliente eléctrico, cuantificada como el periodo de tiempo que la microrred es capaz de alimentar a un consumidor eléctrico ante un corte, lo que resulta de gran importancia para grandes edificios de oficinas que suelen tener varias cargas críticas, como servidores de datos y centros de proceso de datos. Se comprobó que, añadiendo energía solar fotovoltaica y almacenamiento electroquímico, es posible ampliar la resiliencia energética de este tipo de clientes eléctricos logrando un tiempo medio de supervivencia a un corte de suministro de 4 h gracias al sistema solar fotovoltaico y de almacenamiento de energía propuesto. Así, la microrred podría ahorrar 112.410$ en energía durante los 20 años de vida útil de la instalación, a la vez que aumenta el tiempo de supervivencia a un corte de suministro. La metodología propuesta en este documento proporciona un modelo que puede aplicarse a otros casos de estudio y escenarios donde se precisen alternativas a los sistemas clásicos basados en sistemas diésel para el suministro de emergencia.S

Investigating the potential of the slurry technology for sustainable pig farm heating

Sustainable energy development in the farming sector is an essential strategy to respond the combined challenge of achieving a reliable and affordable solution but including mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Intensive breeding farms require maintaining an adequate indoor thermal environment that results in high energy demands, usually covered by fossil fuels and electricity. This paper addresses the application of the combined slurry technology for a particular pig farm that currently uses a diesel boiler to supply the piglet heating energy needs. The study also considers different options based on closed ground source heat pump systems. After the design of the slurry alternative and the geothermal ones, notable advantages are detected compared to the existing diesel system. Results show that the implementation of the slurry technology implies an important reduction of the operational costs, which, in turn, involves short amortization periods for this system in relation to the diesel one. Greenhouse gases emissions are also highly reduced in the slurry alternative based on the low electricity use of the heat pump. The environmental side is reinforced by the reduction of polluting substances such as methane of ammonia derived from the descent of temperature of the slurry

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers

Correction: Nature Communications 10 (2019): art. 4386 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12095-8Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r(g) = 0.57, p = 4.6 x 10(-8)), breast and ovarian cancer (r(g) = 0.24, p = 7 x 10(-5)), breast and lung cancer (r(g) = 0.18, p = 1.5 x 10(-6)) and breast and colorectal cancer (r(g) = 0.15, p = 1.1 x 10(-4)). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis.Peer reviewe

COVID-19 vaccine failure

COVID-19 affects the population unequally with a higher impact on aged and immunosuppressed people. Hence, we assessed the effect of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in immune compromised patients (older adults and oncohematologic patients), compared with healthy counterparts. While the acquired humoral and cellular memory did not predict subsequent infection 18 months after full immunization, spectral and computational cytometry revealed several subsets within the CD8+ T-cells, B-cells, NK cells, monocytes and CD45RA+ CCR7- Tγδ cells differentially expressed in further infected and non-infected individuals not just following immunization, but also prior to that. Of note, up to 7 subsets were found within the CD45RA+ CCR7- Tγδ population with some of them being expanded and other decreased in subsequently infected individuals. Moreover, some of these subsets also predicted COVID-induced hospitalization in oncohematologic patients. Therefore, we hereby have identified several cellular subsets that, even before vaccination, strongly related to COVID-19 vulnerability as opposed to the acquisition of cellular and/or humoral memory following vaccination with SARS-CoV2 mRNA vaccines.This study has been funded through Programa Estratégico Instituto de Biología y Genética Molecular (IBGM Junta de Castilla y León. Ref. CCVC8485), Junta de Castilla y León (Proyectos COVID 07.04.467B04.74011.0) and the European Commission – NextGenerationEU (Regulation EU 2020/2094), through CSIC's Global Health Platform (PTI Salud Global; SGL21-03-026 and SGL2021-03-038)N

Common variants in Alzheimer's disease and risk stratification by polygenic risk scores.

Funder: Funder: Fundación bancaria ‘La Caixa’ Number: LCF/PR/PR16/51110003 Funder: Grifols SA Number: LCF/PR/PR16/51110003 Funder: European Union/EFPIA Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Number: 115975 Funder: JPco-fuND FP-829-029 Number: 733051061Genetic discoveries of Alzheimer's disease are the drivers of our understanding, and together with polygenetic risk stratification can contribute towards planning of feasible and efficient preventive and curative clinical trials. We first perform a large genetic association study by merging all available case-control datasets and by-proxy study results (discovery n = 409,435 and validation size n = 58,190). Here, we add six variants associated with Alzheimer's disease risk (near APP, CHRNE, PRKD3/NDUFAF7, PLCG2 and two exonic variants in the SHARPIN gene). Assessment of the polygenic risk score and stratifying by APOE reveal a 4 to 5.5 years difference in median age at onset of Alzheimer's disease patients in APOE ɛ4 carriers. Because of this study, the underlying mechanisms of APP can be studied to refine the amyloid cascade and the polygenic risk score provides a tool to select individuals at high risk of Alzheimer's disease

Energy Policy, Energy Research, and Energy Politics: An Analytical Review of the Current Situation

Energy policy is becoming a key aspect of the everyday worldwide agenda, and the decisions in this field are directly affecting many aspects, such as energy security, energy supply, and consumer final prices, as well as environmental aspects, among others, and will also affect conditions in the coming years with regard to aspects such as energy resource availability decay, climate change effects, or air contamination. During the last decades, many specific efforts in energy planning research have been carried out by different scientists around the world, but very few of their scientifically based conclusions and recommendations have been transferred into energy planning and energy policy. As a consequence, the energy availability and the environmental situation of the world are worsening; the objectives which aim to achieve a maximum of a 1.5 °C increase are far from being achieved, and many different regions are suffering energy supply disruptions and lack of accessible and secure energy access. This paper analyzes how current energy policy is based more on the direct influence of stakeholders, energy politics, and citizens’ beliefs or preferences than on a scientific approach. It also proposes a different approach that would combine scientific energy planning as a driver for stakeholders and the political decisions which are necessary to consider as soon as possible; this is the only possible way to ensure a sustainable future

Contribution of Driving Efficiency and Vehicle-to-Grid to Eco-Design

Designing eco-friendly products involves energy efficiency improvements. Eco-friendly products must consider not only raw materials and manufacturing processes to improve energy efficiency but also energy needed when designing them. This research shows how eco-routing (ER), eco-charging (EC), eco-driving (EDR), vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and electric vehicles (EVs) can contribute to the reduction of energy consumption during product design. To do this, a group of 44 engineers assigned to the project was chosen to assess the total energy available for V2G when driving EVs from their homes to the design center by using ER, ED and EC by running an application coded by the authors. The energy stored in EVs was used to quantify the reduction in energy consumption of the buildings present in the design center. The results show that the energy saving ranges from 2.89% to 6.9% per day—in other words, 93 kWh per day during the design process. In addition, the fact of making the design process greener implies that renewable energies (REs) are integrated better during the design process. By running the application, drivers are informed about the RE mix when the charging process takes place. Finally, this research shows that current policies make V2G and vehicle-to-home techniques not compatible