Barriers to Community Microgrids in Fragmented Communities:Insights from a Case Study

This paper discusses the challenges of implementing microgrids in fragmented communities and highlights the significance of community identity and active involvement of residents. Community identity fosters inclusiveness and support for social relationships. However, the impact of cooperative and conflictual relationships on governance arrangements and social and environmental outcomes has received limited attention in studies. To illustrate the importance of community involvement in the development of a microgrid, we consider a remote community in Australia with frequent power outages and poor internet connectivity. The study involved a survey and interviews to understand the community's perspectives on the implementation of a microgrid, including their willingness to invest financially in purchasing and selling local renewable energy, their electricity usage patterns, their interest in hosting renewable energy sources, and their willingness to collaborate.</p

Guest editorial: Application of cloud energy storage systems in power systems

Cloud energy storage system (CESS) technology is a novel idea to eliminate the distributed energy storage systems from the consumers into a cloud service centre, where CESS acts as a virtual energy storage capacity instead of the actual devices. The power and energy of several distributed energy storages are combined using a CESS to assure providing storage services for small consumers. A CESS is a shared pool of grid-scale energy storage systems to reduce the cost of energy storage services in the power system which can increase the penetration level of onsite distributed renewable energy sources, reduce the electricity bills of consumers, and provide flexibility to the power grid by reducing the peak loads. The current Special Issue aims to explore technologies, methodologies, and solutions to develop CESSs with an efficient, secure, and stable operation of power systems.Scopu

Forecasting End-of-Life Wind Turbine Material Flows in Australia under Various Wind Energy Deployment Scenarios

A circular economy involves managing and reducing the environmental and social impacts of products and materials throughout their entire lifecycle, from production to end of life, including clean energy technologies. The remarkable growth of wind turbine (WT) deployment in Australia, as a clean energy source, is promising, with over 10 gigawatts (GW) installed by 2023. Responsible management of wind turbines throughout the entire supply chain, including their end of life, is crucial to prevent potential environmental issues caused by significant waste volumes and to identify opportunities for resource recovery. This study offers a comprehensive overview of current and future WT waste through material flow analysis (MFA) under five national wind energy deployment scenarios, considering various wind turbine technologies. The results indicate that the projected cumulative WT installation capacity will range from 13 to 38 GW by 2041. Consequently, the cumulative WT waste volume is expected to range between 6.69 and 19.76 million tonnes in 2060, depending on the scenario, with the “slow change” scenario producing the least waste and the “step change” scenario generating the most. The estimated waste stream will see a rapid increase from about 2028, encompassing a variety of materials, primarily concrete at 10.20 million tonnes, followed by 3.21 million tonnes of steel and 35.41 kt of copper by 2060. Additionally, valuable materials such as rare earth elements (REEs) and composites, despite their smaller quantities, have significant environmental, economic, and supply chain security implications. This substantial waste material presents an opportunity for resource recovery and underscores the importance of adopting a circular economy approach for wind energy systems

CO2 utilization through integration of post-combustion carbon capture process with Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquid (GTL) processes

Carbon capture is addressed as a medium term solution while industry and society are in their path towards future clean energies. However, in the absence of demand market and a revenue source for the recovered almost-pure CO2, the remained option, i.e. storage, does not seem to justify the economic feasibility of this climate change mitigation approach. In our current integration study, we consider existence of a Fischer-Tropsch Gas-to-liquid (GTL) plant in the vicinity of a fossil-fuel based power plant. The captured CO2 with post-combustion carbon capture technologies is fed into the GTL plants’ reformer, i.e. a steam reformer or an auto-thermal reformer. We have presented a few case-studies based on optimal process simulation in Aspen Hysys software package. Unlike most of the studies, our objective is to maximize the wax production rate as upgrading could be carried out at demand market side. The results for a 300 MW coal-fired plant, and a GTL plant with the capacity of one train of Sasol Oryx GTL plant in Qatar show that an auto-thermal reformer (ATR) based GTL process does not have flexibility for CO2 intake, while all of the captured CO2 fed into the steam-methane reformer (SMR) process could be consumed. In summary, one train of Sasol Oryx GTL plant with a SMR reactor can utilize a net quantity of 105.5 tonnes-CO2/h with subtracting the purged CO2. The paper provides a detailed optimization-based data

A decision support tool for multi-attribute evaluation of demand-side commercial battery storage products

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier LtdWith the diversification of commercial energy storage technologies, choosing a suitable technology is becoming a complex decision-making process. The complexity is rooted in the many decision criteria such as technology, brand reputation, energy capacity, volume, weight, aging, and warranty among many others. As such, for non-expert users, particularly small households or enterprises, the act of energy storage adoption is becoming growingly cumbersome. To address this problem, this paper introduces a decision support tool for the evaluation of commercial (small-scale) energy storage products. It then identifies the most suitable option(s) based on the users' preferences. For the reasons elaborated in the paper, nine multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodologies have been employed. Altogether, 19 attributes are identified for the evaluation of (battery) energy storage technologies. The decision support tool is developed in the Matlab environment and includes a graphical user interface for easier interaction of non-expert users. For the demonstration, three scenario cases have been studied for users with different preferences. The ranking results clearly show the marked impact of users preferences on the recommended energy storage technologies. This implies that a tool like this can help small users in the selection of their right technology and avoid resource loss due to inappropriate technology selection, which can be neither economical nor sustainable.Peer reviewe

Trends in CO2 conversion and utilization: A review from process systems perspective

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) community has been struggling over the past few decades to demonstrate the economic feasibility of CO2 sequestration. Nevertheless, in practice, it has only proven feasible under conditions with a market for the recovered CO2, such as in the beverage industry or enhanced oil/gas recovery. The research community and industry are progressively converging to a conclusion that CO2 sequestration has severe limitations for the value proposition. Alternatively, creating diverse demand markets and revenue streams for the recovered almost-pure CO2 may prevail over CO2 sequestration option and improve the economic feasibility of this climate change mitigation approach. As such, research in the carbon capture and management field is seen to be shifting towards CO2 utilization, directly and indirectly, in energy and chemical industries. In this paper, we have critically reviewed the literature on carbon capture, conversion, and utilization routes and assessed the progress in the research and developments in this direction. Both physical and chemical CO2 utilization pathways are studied and the principles of key routes are identified. The literature is also probed in addressing the process integration scenarios and the performance assessment benchmarks