The unexplored impact of emergent technologies on music industry stakeholders:aspirants, producers and consumers

This critical overview draws upon a portfolio consisting of two book chapters, three journal articles and one conference paper all published in international publications between 2011 and the present. The papers have been underpinned, supported and disseminated through 18 conference presentations and a variety of interventions with the commercial environment, all undertaken during the same period. The outputs are crossdisciplinary encompassing technology, acoustics, psychoacoustics, business, music, psychology, physiology, cultural studies etc. The work is tied into two sets of funding from the Higher Education Academy (HEA) focussing on the use of emergent technology to develop music producers’ expertise. The work therefore represents a cohesive but diverse set of outputs, and is reflective of the technologically-driven nature of the creative industries, and the multidisciplinary experience of the author

Using renewable DC energy sources: improving domestic energy efficiency

For over 100 years the generation of AC electricity has occurred at central locations with distribution through the utility grids to the load. However, in recent years there has been a significant rise in the installation of residential embedded generation, primarily in the form of photovoltaics, which generate DC energy. There is also an impending revolution in the installation of distributed domestic battery storage systems which also utilise DC energy. Finally, there is an increase in the number of electronic devices operating primarily on DC in use in daily domestic applications. The combination of these three situations raises the question of using DC energy directly from the generation or storage medium without inverting to AC first. This project seeks to answer this question through determining if an efficiency gain, both energy and financial, can be achieved. To complete this analysis, an investigation of AC and DC energy supplies was conducted with the various advantages and disadvantages being reviewed. Average residential usage profiles were determined along with average daily consumption. Models were created to simulate their function. Once the models were developed a range of AC and DC configurations were simulated with and without photovoltaics and battery storage systems installed. This modelling determined that converting a residential installation to DC, whilst still maintaining an AC grid connection through a central inverter/rectifier, yielded an energy saving of between 1.686% and 4.694%. However financially, the operation of an AC system with photovoltaics connected was the best option. This is a configuration that is very popular for residential installations. Despite residential DC utilisation offering an energy efficiency gain over the accepted AC, the financial benefits are still not available and the absence of residential DC appliances makes further advancement in the area difficult. However, with the continuation of photovoltaic installations, the impending installation of battery storage systems, changing consumer load types and the positive results determined by this project, it is clear that residential DC installations could be a viable option in the not too distant future