Solar PV Microgrids Implementation model: A case study of Local Self Governments in the Indian State of Kerala

The State of Kerala in Southern part of India has significant potential for generation of power from renewable energy sources, especially solar energy. Most of the PV projects in the State are being implemented on roof-tops due to the unavailability of land area in the densely populated State for large utility scale PV power plants. The concept of implementing Solar PV projects by empowering Local Self Governments has been explained in this paper by illustrating the case study of the Indian State of Kerala. The respective Local Self Governments like Municipal Corporations are playing a key role in Kerala in this decision-making process to accomplish model carbon free solar communities by installing Solar Photovoltaic Projects. The requirement of local beneficiary will be analysed by local trained experts and feasibility study will be conducted for the beneficiary communities involving residential buildings, local industries and commercial institutions and educational institutions and the PV projects will be implemented utilising the local E.P.C players. Local Self Governments like Municipal Corporations were empowered to plan, formulate and implement their own Solar Photovoltaic Projects. This approach is being implemented in Kerala resulting in solar electrification of local communities/institutions through the decentralised approach. This created a new business model at the local level involving trained manpower and supply chain for meeting the Local Self Government targets for new PV projects in order to achieve the targets of carbon free communities

Design and simulation of solar roof-top projects for an energy self-reliant university campus

A University campus becoming self-reliant in terms of electricity generation is always important. The power requirement of a University campus is mainly for its academic blocks for different departments. The laboratories, libraries, and hostel facilities also require continuous power needs. Conventionally, the electricity needs are met utilizing the power received from the local utility and the University will be paying for it based on the tariff fixed by the local regulators and agreed by the utility. It is proposed to install Solar Roof-top PV power plants in shade-free rooftops of the buildings inside a University campus to offset the University’s electricity needs and to make the University self-reliant in terms of electricity generation and consumption. This integrated and comprehensive solar project is intended to reduce the carbon footprint of the University and aiming for a carbon-neutral campus. Detailed feasibility studies have been conducted for installing solar roof-top power plants in the selected building roof-tops of the University. Based on the feasibility study, design and simulation have been carried out for a total 1.6MWp capacity of solar roof-top projects to completely offset the total electricity needs of the University based on the current electricity consumption patterns. The design and simulation are accomplished utilizing PVsyst software and the economic and environmental analysis has been carried out utilizing RETscreen software for arriving at the result

Comparison of normal and weather corrected performance ratio of photovoltaic solar plants in hot and cold climates

Performance Ratio (PR) is one of the best performance metrics used to assess solar power plant performance. PR is also used for commercial acceptance of an installed PV power plants. If the PR is tested in different climatic conditions or seasons, there are bias errors, affecting the contractual acceptance testing. PR is often corrected to the Standard Test Conditions (STC), resulting in higher PR since modules usually operate at higher temperatures. This research work utilizes NREL's advanced methodology to determine weather corrected PR of PV power plants in six different geographical locations and climatic regions. The Solar PV plant performance is simulated to get the normal PR as per IEC 61724-1:2017. Percentage variation of Weather corrected PR with Normal PR is determined for all these six geographical regions and compared. The weather corrected PR of Montana (with the lowest annual average temperature of 1.58 °C.) PV power plant has a maximum variation of 7.64% from the normal PR during the summer and −8.61% variation in December during the winter. The weather corrected PR of Kuzhalmannam (with the highest annual average temperature of 27.28 °C) PV power plant has a maximum variation of only 1.16% from the normal PR during summer and a variation of −0.91% in July during the rainy season. It is concluded that the metric of weather-corrected PR gains paramount importance for colder areas, whereas it has minimal influence for tropical regions

Electrochemical Deposited Nickel Nanowires: Influence of Deposition Bath Temperature on the Morphology and Physical Properties

This paper investigates the influence of the electrolytic bath temperature on the morphology and physical properties of nickel (Ni) nanowires electrochemically deposited into the anodic alumina oxide porous membrane (AAO). The synthesis was performed using nickel sulfate hexahydrate (NiSO4.6H2O) and boric acid (H3BO3) as an electrolytic bath for the electrochemical deposition of Ni nanowires. During the experiment, the electrolyte bath temperature varied from 40°C, 80°C, and 120°C. After the electrochemical deposition process, AAO templates cleaned with distilled water preceding to dissolution in sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution to obtain free-standing Ni nanowires. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis were employed to characterize the morphology and physical properties of the synthesized Ni nanowires. Finding reveals the electrodeposition bath temperature significantly influences the morphology and physical properties of the synthesized Ni nanowires. Rougher surface texture, larger crystal size, and longer Ni nanowires obtained as the deposition bath temperature increased

Ensemble Augmentation for Deep Neural Networks Using 1-D Time Series Vibration Data

Purpose Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) typically require enormous labeled training samples to achieve optimum performance. Therefore, numerous forms of data augmentation techniques are employed to compensate for the lack of training samples. Methods In this paper, a data augmentation technique named ensemble augmentation is proposed to generate real-like samples. This augmentation method uses the power of white noise added in ensembles to the original samples to generate real-like samples. After averaging the signal with ensembles, a new signal is obtained that contains the characteristics of the original signal. The parameters for the ensemble augmentation are validated using a simulated signal. The proposed method is evaluated by 10 class-bearing vibration data using three Transfer Learning (TL) models, namely, Inception-V3, MobileNet-V2, and ResNet50. The outputs from the proposed method are compared with no augmentation and different augmentation techniques. Results The results showed that the classifiers with the ensemble augmentation have higher validation and test accuracy than all the other augmentation techniques. The robustness assessment conducted with noisy test samples and test samples from different loads showed that the classifiers could obtain much higher robustness when trained with samples from ensemble augmentation. Conclusion The proposed data augmentation technique can be applied to 1-D time series data to achieve robust classifiers

Oral fluid testing facilitates understanding of hepatitis A virus household transmission

The public health response to sporadic hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection, hepatitis A, can be complex especially when the index case is a child and no obvious source is identified. Identifying an infection source may avoid mass immunisation within schools when transmission is found to have occurred within the household. Screening of asymptomatic contacts via venepuncture can be challenging and unacceptable, as a result non-invasive methods may facilitate public health intervention. Enzyme-linked immunoassays were developed to detect HAV immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) in oral fluid (ORF). A validation panel of ORF samples from 30 confirmed acute HAV infections were all reactive for HAV IgM and IgG when tested. A panel of 40 ORF samples from persons known to have been uninfected were all unreactive. Two hundred and eighty household contacts of 72 index cases were screened by ORF to identify HAV transmission within the family and factors associated with household transmission. Almost half of households (35/72) revealed evidence of recent infection, which was significantly associated with the presence of children ⩽11 years of age (odds ratio 9.84, 95% confidence interval: 2.74–35.37). These HAV IgM and IgG immunoassays are easy to perform, rapid and sensitive and have been integrated into national guidance on the management of hepatitis A cases

Investigation of bending and compression properties on PLA-brass composite using FDM

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is often favored over conventional techniques as it can produce highly accurate three-dimensional models with minimal material waste. Nevertheless, in FDM, the mechanical properties of different materials used in the FDM process are of ongoing interest. Since the properties of brass alloys in the FDM process are still lacking, the present study focuses on the bending and compression properties of the FDM printed part with 15Â wt and 70Â wt of brass-reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) and various infill patterns. The specimen preparation and testing were carried out accordingly to ASTM D790 and ASTM D695, respectively. The impact of five different infill patterns and two different compositions on the bending and compression properties was also analyzed using response surface methodology. A prediction model is then developed to predict the desired bending and compression properties. Results show that the 15Â wt of brass composition specimens have better properties compared with the 70Â wt of brass composition. This is due to an increase in the wt of brass composition, which resulted in lower interlayer adhesion energy with the PLA. It was also found that the concentric and grid pattern are the best printing pattern for bending and compression properties, respectively

Investigation of thermal performance and chemical stability of graphene enhanced phase change material for thermal energy storage

Phase change materials (PCMs) have received widespread thermal energy storage (TES) and release properties due to their unique characteristics. However, the PCMs suffer from poor thermal conductivity, resulting in the least thermal performance and heat transfer characteristics. This research focused on enhancing the heat transfer and storage characteristics by developing an organic paraffin wax composite by dispersing highly conductive graphene powder using a two-step technique. The results show that the developed nano enhanced PCM significantly improves the thermal conductivity by 72.2% at 0.6 wt% of graphene powder. Furthermore, the Fourier transform infrared spectrum shows there is no additional peak observed, means physically and chemically stable, and the reduced light transmission capability was enhanced by 32.0% than pure PCM. Due to its extreme characteristics, the developed PCM is an outstanding material for medium temperature solar thermal energy storage applications

Investigation of thermal performance and chemical stability of graphene enhanced phase change material for thermal energy storage

Phase change materials (PCMs) have received widespread thermal energy storage (TES) and release properties due to their unique characteristics. However, the PCMs suffer from poor thermal conductivity, resulting in the least thermal performance and heat transfer characteristics. This research focused on enhancing the heat transfer and storage characteristics by developing an organic paraffin wax composite by dispersing highly conductive graphene powder using a two-step technique. The results show that the developed nano enhanced PCM significantly improves the thermal conductivity by 72.2 at 0.6Â wt of graphene powder. Furthermore, the Fourier transform infrared spectrum shows there is no additional peak observed, means physically and chemically stable, and the reduced light transmission capability was enhanced by 32.0 than pure PCM. Due to its extreme characteristics, the developed PCM is an outstanding material for medium temperature solar thermal energy storage applications

Gigantic amoebic liver abscess in pregnancy : A case report

Amoebic liver abscess in pregnancy is genuinely rare in its presentation. Yet, the main issue surrounding this agenda is the diagnostic challenge that it poses especially when symptomatology is vague and clues are subtle which altogether evades the diagnosis proper. We would like to dwell mainly on these issues in hopes of enlightening clinicians towards these diagnostic dilemmas. We report an extremely rare case of amoebic liver abscess occurring in the third trimester of pregnancy in a 29-year-old lady living in an interior village in Sabah. It was a combination of biochemical, radiographic and molecular investigations that ultimately led to the final diagnosis. In lieu of the high risk of mortality amongst pregnant mothers afflicted with amoebic liver abscess, the inherent need for early diagnosis requiring a high index of suspicion is vital. Elevated alkaline phosphatase alongside neutrophilia appears to be the most consistent liver parameters in guiding clinicians towards the presence of liver abscess