16 research outputs found
Community/shared solar power option: a pathway to sustainable rural electrification in Nigeria
Submitted: February 6th, 2021 ; Accepted: June 11th, 2021 ; Published: November 8th, 2021 ; Correspondence: [email protected], [email protected] governments at all levels have been making concerted effort to extend
electricity supply to the rural areas. Among the several efforts by various governments are
formulation of rural electrification policies, creation of agencies for the administration of rural
electrification projects, installation of diesel power generators, and development of public-private
partnership strategies in solving rural power supply problems. While significant progress has been
made, several rural communities are yet to have access to electricity supply. Rugged terrain and
limited financial resources are among the constraints to extension off-grid to the rural areas.
However, electricity supply, being one of the drivers of economic development and social wellbeing, is a problem that has to be tackled head-on. The current climate change concern and many
other environmental issues of our time necessitate finding a sustainable solution to the problem.
Consequently the goal of this study was to examine the potentials of community solar power
option as a sustainable rural electrification approach in Nigeria. Other goals included identifying
potential hick-ups and solutions to lifecycle management of community solar. Moreover, the
study was to determine the suitable configuration for efficient and sustainable community solar
power management in Nigeria. The study methodology involved intensive literature survey,
historical data collection and case studies on rural electrification in Nigeria as well as examples
of community solar projects in Nigeria. Preliminary results revealed that community solar power
would be a sustainable approach to rural electrification in Nigeria if a number of conditions are
satisfied. Some of the conditions to be satisfied include devolving the management of a
community solar system to a participative committee of stakeholders representatives, and
incorporating community capacity building in the plan. Other conditions are government,
corporate and municipalitiesâ collaboration in funding such projects from scratch till after one or
two years of operation, and incorporation of monitoring and intervention strategies for continuous
power supply and further improvement
Bioeconomy, digital economy, sharing economy, industry 4.0, and other new concepts: A look at how the pieces fit together
Within the last two decades, in attempts to foster efficient resource use and promote
sustainability, scholars have come up with a number of new ideas, paradigms and
innovations that have revolutionized how we practice engineering and do business.
There are now so many concepts such as bioeconomy, circular economy digital
economy, industry 4.0, and product of service, that one wonders how some of them
differ from one another and some stakeholders are left in a state of confusion. This
paper attempts to clarify a number of popular concepts, how they differ from each other,
and how they fit together to promote sustainable development and foster a healthy
society. The study is based on literature survey and drawing on several years of
experience working in the research field. The paper is expected to provide a clear
perspective of various areas of the research field and eliminate confusion engendered by
rapid development of new concepts in the field. In addition, the paper is expected to
shed light on how the concepts can be implemented either progressively and/or
harmoniously
Develop a cost model to evaluate the economic benefit of remanufacturing based on specific technique
Remanufacturing is a process of recovering used products to a like-new condition. It can potentially achieve considerable economic, environmental and social benefits in many applications. However, its economic benefit varies for different products and remanufacturing processes. This research aims to develop a framework and cost model to quantitatively evaluate the benefits of remanufacturing techniques to assist the decision making on end-of-life strategies. Additive manufacturing-based remanufacturing process has been modelled first, then cost breakdown structure for the process has been created, and the cost model has been developed. Validation of the cost model has been conducted based on expert judgement, and a case study has been carried out by using the developed cost model to compare the benefit of remanufacturing a specified component or making a new one
Landscape Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing Development and Operations on Surface Water and Watersheds
Landscapes and watersheds are complex cultural biogeoclimatic systems that are not easily bounded, measured or understood by a single body of expertise. This makes it very challenging to locate and synthesize the best available science to identify what decisionâmakers need to know about landscape and watershed impacts of hydraulic fracturing. âLandscapeâ is not a physical object as much as it is a spatial context for multiple natural processes and human activities. As such, what decisionâmakers need to know depends upon the specific locations and situational conditions in which hydraulic fracturing is operating. Fracking exists in landscape and watershed contexts that are highly variable at different scales and across different regions. There is a relatively high degree of certainty, within predictable engineered limits, about specific wellâbased fracking operations. In contrast, there is a lot of uncertainty about how complex social ecological landscape and watershed systems function. Potential landscape and watershed impacts exist in the context of a complex and integrated system of spatial and functional interâconnections and interârelationships and needs to be understood in this system context (Figure Aâ1). We approached landscape and watershed impacts of hydraulic fracturing from a multiâdisciplinary social and natural science framework in order to try and capture this complexity. We emerged with common agreement around the difficulties presented by âsilosâ of expertise when trying to deal with complex systems. The primary learning from our multidisciplinary approach is the need for greater institutional opportunities to integrate and coordinate a spectrum of approaches to address knowledge gaps in multiple system interactions across scales and involving system threshold effects that may be social in nature as well as biogeochemical