4,727 research outputs found
One rate does not fit all: An empirical analysis of electricity tariffs for residential microgrids
Increasingly, residential customers are deploying PV units to lower electricity bills and contribute to a more sustainable use of resources. This selective decentralization of power generation, however, creates significant challenges, because current transmission and distribution grids were designed for centralized power generation and unidirectional flows. Restructuring residential neighborhoods as residential microgrids might solve these problems to an extent, but energy retailers and system operators have yet to identify ways of fitting residential microgrids into the energy value chain. One promising way of doing so is the tailoring of residential microgrid tariffs, as this encourages grid-stabilizing behavior and fairly re-distributes the associated costs. We thus identify a set of twelve tariff candidates and estimate their probable effects on energy bills as well as load and generation profiles. Specifically, we model 100 residential microgrids and simulate how these microgrids might respond to each of the twelve tariffs. Our analyses reveal three important insights. Number one: volumetric tariffs would not only inflate electricity bills but also encourage sharp load and generation peaks, while failing to reliably allocate system costs. Number two: under tariffs with capacity charges, time-varying rates would have little impact on both electricity bills and load and generation peaks. Number three: tariffs that bill system and energy retailer costs via capacity and customer charges respectively would lower electricity bills, foster peak shaving, and facilitate stable cost allocation
Finitely generated free Heyting algebras via Birkhoff duality and coalgebra
Algebras axiomatized entirely by rank 1 axioms are algebras for a functor and
thus the free algebras can be obtained by a direct limit process. Dually, the
final coalgebras can be obtained by an inverse limit process. In order to
explore the limits of this method we look at Heyting algebras which have mixed
rank 0-1 axiomatizations. We will see that Heyting algebras are special in that
they are almost rank 1 axiomatized and can be handled by a slight variant of
the rank 1 coalgebraic methods
A new method for analyzing ground-state landscapes: ballistic search
A ``ballistic-search'' algorithm is presented which allows the identification
of clusters (or funnels) of ground states in Ising spin glasses even for
moderate system sizes. The clusters are defined to be sets of states, which are
connected in state-space by chains of zero-energy flips of spins. The technique
can also be used to estimate the sizes of such clusters. The performance of the
method is tested with respect to different system sizes and choices of
parameters. As an application the ground-state funnel structure of
two-dimensional +or- J spin glasses of systems up to size L=20 is analyzed by
calculating a huge number of ground states per realization. A T=0 entropy per
spin of s_0=0.086(4)k_B is obtained.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, 35 references, revte
Anomalous Diffusion in Aperiodic Environments
We study the Brownian motion of a classical particle in one-dimensional
inhomogeneous environments where the transition probabilities follow
quasiperiodic or aperiodic distributions. Exploiting an exact correspondence
with the transverse-field Ising model with inhomogeneous couplings we obtain
many new analytical results for the random walk problem. In the absence of
global bias the qualitative behavior of the diffusive motion of the particle
and the corresponding persistence probability strongly depend on the
fluctuation properties of the environment. In environments with bounded
fluctuations the particle shows normal diffusive motion and the diffusion
constant is simply related to the persistence probability. On the other hand in
a medium with unbounded fluctuations the diffusion is ultra-slow, the
displacement of the particle grows on logarithmic time scales. For the
borderline situation with marginal fluctuations both the diffusion exponent and
the persistence exponent are continuously varying functions of the
aperiodicity. Extensions of the results to disordered media and to higher
dimensions are also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, RevTe
Multi-wavelength analysis of high energy electrons in solar flares: a case study of August 20, 2002 flare
A multi-wavelength spatial and temporal analysis of solar high energy
electrons is conducted using the August 20, 2002 flare of an unusually flat
(gamma=1.8) hard X-ray spectrum. The flare is studied using RHESSI, Halpha,
radio, TRACE, and MDI observations with advanced methods and techniques never
previously applied in the solar flare context. A new method to account for
X-ray Compton backscattering in the photosphere (photospheric albedo) has been
used to deduce the primary X-ray flare spectra. The mean electron flux
distribution has been analysed using both forward fitting and model independent
inversion methods of spectral analysis. We show that the contribution of the
photospheric albedo to the photon spectrum modifies the calculated mean
electron flux distribution, mainly at energies below 100 keV. The positions of
the Halpha emission and hard X-ray sources with respect to the current-free
extrapolation of the MDI photospheric magnetic field and the characteristics of
the radio emission provide evidence of the closed geometry of the magnetic
field structure and the flare process in low altitude magnetic loops. In
agreement with the predictions of some solar flare models, the hard X-ray
sources are located on the external edges of the Halpha emission and show
chromospheric plasma heated by the non-thermal electrons. The fast changes of
Halpha intensities are located not only inside the hard X-ray sources, as
expected if they are the signatures of the chromospheric response to the
electron bombardment, but also away from them.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, accepted to Solar Physic
On the role of the magnetic dipolar interaction in cold and ultracold collisions: Numerical and analytical results for NH() + NH()
We present a detailed analysis of the role of the magnetic dipole-dipole
interaction in cold and ultracold collisions. We focus on collisions between
magnetically trapped NH molecules, but the theory is general for any two
paramagnetic species for which the electronic spin and its space-fixed
projection are (approximately) good quantum numbers. It is shown that dipolar
spin relaxation is directly associated with magnetic-dipole induced avoided
crossings that occur between different adiabatic potential curves. For a given
collision energy and magnetic field strength, the cross-section contributions
from different scattering channels depend strongly on whether or not the
corresponding avoided crossings are energetically accessible. We find that the
crossings become lower in energy as the magnetic field decreases, so that
higher partial-wave scattering becomes increasingly important \textit{below} a
certain magnetic field strength. In addition, we derive analytical
cross-section expressions for dipolar spin relaxation based on the Born
approximation and distorted-wave Born approximation. The validity regions of
these analytical expressions are determined by comparison with the NH + NH
cross sections obtained from full coupled-channel calculations. We find that
the Born approximation is accurate over a wide range of energies and field
strengths, but breaks down at high energies and high magnetic fields. The
analytical distorted-wave Born approximation gives more accurate results in the
case of s-wave scattering, but shows some significant discrepancies for the
higher partial-wave channels. We thus conclude that the Born approximation
gives generally more meaningful results than the distorted-wave Born
approximation at the collision energies and fields considered in this work.Comment: Accepted by Eur. Phys. J. D for publication in Special Issue on Cold
Quantum Matter - Achievements and Prospects (2011
Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV
The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8 TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum
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