Adaptive Transmission Planning: Implementing a New Paradigm for Managing Economic Risks in Grid Expansion

The problem of whether, where, when, and what types of transmission facilities to build in terms of minimizing costs and maximizing net economic benefits has been a challenge for the power industry from the beginning-ever since Thomas Edison debated whether to create longer dc distribution lines (with their high losses) or build new power stations in expanding his urban markets. Today?s planning decisions are far more complex, as grids cover the continent and new transmission, generation, and demand-side technologies emerge

蓮華寺池と西湖 : 石野雲嶺の風景

The potential for increased drought frequency and severity linked to anthropogenic climate change in the semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States (US) is a serious concern1. Multi-year droughts during the instrumental period2 and decadal-length droughts of the past two millennia1, 3 were shorter and climatically different from the future permanent, ‘dust-bowl-like’ megadrought conditions, lasting decades to a century, that are predicted as a consequence of warming4. So far, it has been unclear whether or not such megadroughts occurred in the southwestern US, and, if so, with what regularity and intensity. Here we show that periods of aridity lasting centuries to millennia occurred in the southwestern US during mid-Pleistocene interglacials. Using molecular palaeotemperature proxies5 to reconstruct the mean annual temperature (MAT) in mid-Pleistocene lacustrine sediment from the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, we found that the driest conditions occurred during the warmest phases of interglacials, when the MAT was comparable to or higher than the modern MAT. A collapse of drought-tolerant C4 plant communities during these warm, dry intervals indicates a significant reduction in summer precipitation, possibly in response to a poleward migration of the subtropical dry zone. Three MAT cycles ~2 °C in amplitude occurred within Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 and seem to correspond to the muted precessional cycles within this interglacial. In comparison with MIS 11, MIS 13 experienced higher precessional-cycle amplitudes, larger variations in MAT (4–6 °C) and a longer period of extended warmth, suggesting that local insolation variations were important to interglacial climatic variability in the southwestern US. Comparison of the early MIS 11 climate record with the Holocene record shows many similarities and implies that, in the absence of anthropogenic forcing, the region should be entering a cooler and wetter phase

Characterization of a Mobile Oscillatory Fatigue Operator for Wind Turbine Blade Testing

Laboratory testing of wind turbine blades is required to meet wind turbine design standards, reduce machine cost, and reduce the technical and fi nancial risks of deploying mass-produced wind turbine models. Fatigue testing at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) is currently conducted using Universal Resonance Excitation (UREX) technology. In a UREX test, the blade is mounted to a rigid stand and hydraulic exciters mounted to the blade are used to excite the blade to its resonant frequency. A drawback to UREX technology is that mounting hydraulic systems to the blade is diffi cult and requires a relatively long set-up period. An alternative testing technology called the Mobile Oscillatory Fatigue Operator (MOFO) has been analyzed. The MOFO uses an oscillating blade test-stand rather than a rigid stand, avoiding the need to place hydraulic systems on the blade. The MOFO will be demonstrated by converting an existing test-stand at the NWTC to an oscillating stand that can test blades up to 25 m in length. To obtain the loads necessary to design the MOFO, the system motion is modeled using rigid body and lumped mass dynamics models. Preliminary modeling indicates the existing stand can be converted to a MOFO relatively easily. However, the blade dynamic models suggest that blade bending moment distributions are signifi cantly different for UREX and MOFO testing; more sophisticated models are required to assess the implication of this difference on the accuracy of the test

π‑Delocalization and the Vibrational Spectroscopy of Conjugated Materials: Computational Insights on Raman Frequency Dispersion in Thiophene, Furan, and Pyrrole Oligomers

The symmetric CC stretching frequency (ν_Я) of conjugated polymers and oligomers is a sensitive spectroscopic reporter of molecular structure and material morphologies; however, thorough understanding of how structure affects this frequency is lacking because computational investigations of this relationship have been undertaken with limited approaches. We present a comprehensive computational investigation of the structure-dependent Raman spectroscopy of oligothiophenes, oligofurans, and oligopyrroles in their ground electronic states using density functional theory. We assessed how various functionals (BLYP, B3LYP, BHLYP, and CAM-B3LYP) impact predictions of length-dependent trends in ν_Я. The amount of Hartree–Fock exchange in a functional is critical for accurately treating π-delocalization and polarizability and hence the structure-dependent Raman behavior. BLYP and B3LYP fail to accurately predict trends in ν_Я with oligomer length because they over-represent delocalization; in contrast, the range-corrected CAM-B3LYP functional produces the same trends observed experimentally for oligomers in solution and in the solid phase. Through comparisons with a simple mechanical model, we demonstrate that the length- and conformation-dependent spectroscopy of oligothiophenes results from a delicate balance between delocalization-induced softening of ν_Я and the coupling of oscillators that increase ν_Я. These findings are used to address how variations in inter- and intramolecular order impact the Raman spectroscopy of polythiophenes

Adaptive Transmission Planning: Implementing a New Paradigm for Managing Economic Risks in Grid Expansion

The problem of whether, where, when, and what types of transmission facilities to build in terms of minimizing costs and maximizing net economic benefits has been a challenge for the power industry from the beginning-ever since Thomas Edison debated whether to create longer dc distribution lines (with their high losses) or build new power stations in expanding his urban markets. Today?s planning decisions are far more complex, as grids cover the continent and new transmission, generation, and demand-side technologies emerge