Planning of PEVs Parking Lots in Conjunction With Renewable Energy Resources and Battery Energy Storage Systems

The last few decades have seen growing concerns about climate change caused by global warming, which is cause primarily by CO2 emissions. Thus, the reduction of these emissions has become critically important. One of the effective methods for achieving this goal is to shift towards green electricity energy resources and green vehicles in transportation. For these reasons, the goal of the work presented in this thesis was to address the challenges associated with the planning of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) parking lots in combination with renewable energy sources (RES) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in power distribution networks. This thesis introduces a new planning technique that aims to minimize the overall capital and operational costs, taking into consideration the operational aspects of distribution networks, such as 1) coordinated PEV charging, 2) smart inverter control of renewable distributed generation (DG) units, and 3) smart scheduling of BESS. Moreover, a new model for the PEV coordinated charging demand is introduced in this work. Due to the complexity of the proposed planning approach, a combination between metaheuristic technique and deterministic optimization techniques have been utilized to manage both the planning and operational aspects respectively

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially