Case Studies in Using Interval Data Energy Models for Savings Verification: Lessons from the Grocery Sector

The use of whole building utility interval data for verifying energy savings from energy efficiency projects has become an attractive option as this data is increasingly available. Formal protocols, such as IPMVP Option C and ASHRAE Guideline 14, describe a whole building savings approach, but may require up to one full year of post-implementation data in order to claim annual energy savings. Many projects cannot absorb this long timeline. This paper builds on previous research and investigates strategies to reduce the required post- implementation monitoring time. Five grocery energy efficiency projects were evaluated using whole building electric interval data to investigate how data resolution, monitoring period length and timing of the post-implementation monitoring period impact the accuracy of annualized savings estimates

Case Studies in Using Interval Data Energy Models for Savings Verification: Lessons from the Grocery Sector

The use of whole building utility interval data for verifying energy savings from energy efficiency projects has become an attractive option as this data is increasingly available. Formal protocols, such as IPMVP Option C and ASHRAE Guideline 14, describe a whole building savings approach, but may require up to one full year of post-implementation data in order to claim annual energy savings. Many projects cannot absorb this long timeline. This paper builds on previous research and investigates strategies to reduce the required post- implementation monitoring time. Five grocery energy efficiency projects were evaluated using whole building electric interval data to investigate how data resolution, monitoring period length and timing of the post-implementation monitoring period impact the accuracy of annualized savings estimates

Opto-Mechanical Failure Detection for Transparent Materials

This disclosure describes techniques for in-situ detection of failures in optical components. Conductive clear coatings, e.g., Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coatings are applied to optically transparent components. Measurements of resistance or capacitance across the coated layers are utilized for the detection of component failure(s) and/or surface contamination on optical surfaces. ITO is optically transparent and electrically conductive, thereby enabling detection of failures without affecting normal functionality of an optical device. For example, ITO is applied as a trace on a surface of the optical component to form an ITO trace network. Component breakage is detected based on a conductance measurement across the ITO trace network. In some cases, the ITO trace network and conductance measurement system can be applied to all optical surfaces on the component, thereby enabling detection of failures on any of the surfaces of the optical component

Single Gain Radiation Tolerant LHC Beam Loss Acquisition Card

The beam loss monitoring system is one of the most critical elements for the protection of the LHC. It must prevent the super conducting magnets from quenches and the machine components from damages, caused by beam losses. Ionization chambers and secondary emission based detectors are used at several locations around the ring. The sensors are producing a signal current, which is related to the losses. This current will be measured by a tunnel card, which acquires, digitizes and transmits the data via an optical link to the surface electronic. The usage of the system, for protection and tuning of the LHC and the scale of the LHC, imposed exceptional specifications of the dynamic range and radiation tolerance. The input dynamic allows measurements between 10pA and 1mA and its protected to high pulse of 1.5kV and its corresponding current. To cover this range, a current to frequency converter in combination with an ADC is used. The integrator output voltage is measured with an ADC to improve the resolution. The radiation tolerance required the adaption of conceptional design and a stringent selection of the components

The Open Graph Archive: A Community-Driven Effort

In order to evaluate, compare, and tune graph algorithms, experiments on well designed benchmark sets have to be performed. Together with the goal of reproducibility of experimental results, this creates a demand for a public archive to gather and store graph instances. Such an archive would ideally allow annotation of instances or sets of graphs with additional information like graph properties and references to the respective experiments and results. Here we examine the requirements, and introduce a new community project with the aim of producing an easily accessible library of graphs. Through successful community involvement, it is expected that the archive will contain a representative selection of both real-world and generated graph instances, covering significant application areas as well as interesting classes of graphs.Comment: 10 page

An FPGA Based Implementation for Real-Time Processing of the LHC Beam Loss Monitoring System's Data

The strategy for machine protection and quench prevention of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) is mainly based on the Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. At each turn, there will be several thousands of data to record and process in order to decide if the beams should be permitted to continue circulating or their safe extraction is necessary to be triggered. The processing involves a proper analysis of the loss pattern in time and for the decision the energy of the beam needs to be accounted. This complexity needs to be minimized by all means to maximize the reliability of the BLM system and allow a feasible implementation. In this paper, a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based implementation is explored for the real-time processing of the LHC BLM data. It gives emphasis on the highly efficient Successive Running Sums (SRS) technique used that allows many and long integration periods to be maintained for each detector's data with relatively small length shift registers that can be built around the embedded memory blocks

The LHC Beam Loss Monitoring System's Surface Building Installation

The strategy for machine protection and quench prevention of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) is mainly based on the Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) system. At each turn, there will be several thousands of data to record and process in order to decide if the beams should be permitted to continue circulating or their safe extraction is necessary. The BLM system can be sub-divided geographically to the tunnel and the surface building installations. In this paper the surface installation is explored, focusing not only to the parts used for the processing of the BLM data and the generation of the beam abort triggers, but also to the interconnections made with various other systems in order to provide the needed functionality

Coating Carbon Fibers With Platinum

A process for coating carbon fibers with platinum has been developed. The process may also be adaptable to coating carbon fibers with other noble and refractory metals, including rhenium and iridium. The coated carbon fibers would be used as ingredients of matrix/fiber composite materials that would resist oxidation at high temperatures. The metal coats would contribute to oxidation resistance by keeping atmospheric oxygen away from fibers when cracks form in the matrices. Other processes that have been used to coat carbon fibers with metals have significant disadvantages: Metal-vapor deposition processes yield coats that are nonuniform along both the lengths and the circumferences of the fibers. The electrical resistivities of carbon fibers are too high to be compatible with electrolytic processes. Metal/organic vapor deposition entails the use of expensive starting materials, it may be necessary to use a furnace, and the starting materials and/or materials generated in the process may be hazardous. The present process does not have these disadvantages. It yields uniform, nonporous coats and is relatively inexpensive. The process can be summarized as one of pretreatment followed by electroless deposition. The process consists of the following steps: The surfaces of the fiber are activated by deposition of palladium crystallites from a solution. The surface-activated fibers are immersed in a solution that contains platinum. A reducing agent is used to supply electrons to effect a chemical reduction in situ. The chemical reduction displaces the platinum from the solution. The displaced platinum becomes deposited on the fibers. Each platinum atom that has been deposited acts as a catalytic site for the deposition of another platinum atom. Hence, the deposition process can also be characterized as autocatalytic. The thickness of the deposited metal can be tailored via the duration of immersion and the chemical activity of the solution

The LHC beam loss monitoring system's data acquisition card

The beam loss monitoring (BLM) system [1] of the LHC is one of the most critical elements for the protection of the LHC. It must prevent the super conducting magnets from quenches and the machine components from damages, caused by beam losses. Ionization chambers and secondary emission based beam loss detectors are used on several locations around the ring. The sensors are producing a signal current, which is related to the losses. This current will be measured by a tunnel electronic, which acquires, digitizes and transmits the data via an optical link to the surface electronic. The so called threshold comparator (TC) [2] collects, analyzes and compares the data with threshold table. It also gives a dump signal through the combiner card to the beam inter lock system (BIC). The usage of the system, for protection and tuning of the LHC and the scale of the LHC, imposed exceptional specification of the dynamic range and radiation tolerance. The input current dynamic range should allow measurements between 10pA and 1mA and it should also be protected to very high pulse of 1.5kV and its corresponding current. To cover this range, a current to frequency converter (CFC) is used in the tunnel card, which produces an output frequency of 0.05Hz at 10pA, and 5MHz at 1mA. In addition to the output frequency, the integrator output voltage is measured with a 12bit ADC to improve the resolution. The location of the CFC card next to the detector imposes the placement of the card in the LHC tunnel, exposing the card to radiation. The radiation tolerance was defined by assuming a 20 year operation period corresponding to 400Gy. A mixture of radiation tolerant Asics from the microelectronic group at CERN, and standard component was chosen to cope with these requirements

Case Studies in Using Whole Building Interval Data to Determine Annualized Electrical Savings

Whole building interval analysis to determine savings from energy reduction measures is addressed in several guidelines. The whole building method has typically focused on measured savings where baseline regression models are developed to project original operational characteristics to measured post implementation results. A normalized savings method is described in the same guidelines. The savings normalization uses baseline and post regression models with a common data set, such as TMY. Details in applying the normalized savings method are not described in the guidelines. The case studies presented in this paper attempt to use the normalized method to determine annual savings. Results show the normalized method produces the same savings percentage as the measured method, but the total energy usage and savings predicted was lower. Using 12, 9, 6 and 3 month post monitoring periods for the development of the post regression models yielded normalized realization rates of 87% to 114% when compared to the measured method results