An assessment of wind power prospects in the Brazilian hydrothermal system

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the social acceptance of renewable and non-renewable energies in Iran using the social acceptance pyramid.Design/methodology/approachToday, social acceptance is considered a very important phenomenon in the development, implementation and achievement of energy policy goals. Low acceptance will make it difficult to achieve energy development goals; therefore, social acceptance must be taken into account when making policy. Firstly, the model criteria, using data obtained from questionnaires, are weighted by the Shannon entropy method and, finally, four sources of fossil, nuclear, wind and solar energy were ranked by means of VIKOR, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS).FindingsThe results show that, in Iran, the social acceptance criterion and trust sub-criterion are the most important criteria for energy acceptance. The results of the ranking of options based on multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques show that, given Iran's specific energy requirements, social acceptance of fossil energy is higher than wind, solar and nuclear, and wind, solar and nuclear energy come later in the rankings.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature in two ways: Firstly, social acceptance is considered a very important phenomenon in the development, implementation and achievement of energy policy goals; thus social acceptance must be taken into account when making policy. The results of the ranking of options based on MCDM techniques show that, given Iran's specific energy requirements, social acceptance of fossil energy is higher than wind, solar and nuclear, and wind, solar and nuclear energy come later in the rankings. Also, the social acceptance criterion and trust sub-criterion are the most important criteria for energy acceptance in Iran.

The impacts that the available energy sources have had on society, the environment, and the economy have become a focus of attention in recent years, generating polarization of opinions. Understanding these impacts is crucial for rational evaluation and the development of strategies for economic growth and energy security. This review examines such impacts of the main energy resources currently exploited or in development, including fossil fuels, geothermal, biomass, solar, hydropower, hydrogen, nuclear, ocean, and wind energies on society through analysis and comparison. It is essential to consider how high energy demand influences energy prices, the workforce, and the environment and to assess the advantages and disadvantages of each energy source. One significant finding from this review is that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) may vary substantially depending on the energy source used and show substantial ranges for different applications of the same energy source. Nuclear energy has the lowest LCOE range whereas ocean energy has the highest LCOE range among the nine energy sources considered. Fossil fuels were found to have the most substantial societal impacts, which involved on the positive side providing by far the largest number of jobs and highest tax revenues. However, on the negative side, fossil fuels, biomass, and nuclear energy sources pose the most significant health threats and social well-being impacts on communities and societies compared to other energy sources. On the other hand, solar, ocean and wind energy pose the lowest risk in terms of health and safety, with solar and wind also currently providing a substantial number of jobs worldwide. Regarding environmental consequences, fossil fuels generate the highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and have the highest adverse impacts on ecosystems. In contrast, nuclear, ocean, solar and wind energies have the lowest GHG emissions and low to moderate impacts on ecosystems. Biomass, geothermal and hydropower energy sources have moderate to high ecosystem impacts compared to the other energy sources. Hydropower facilities require the most materials (mainly concrete) to build per unit of energy generated, followed by wind and solar energy, which require substantial steel and concrete per unit of energy generated. The lack of substantial materials recycling causes associated with solar and wind energy sources. All the energies that use thermal power generation process consume substantial quantities of water for cooling. The analysis and comparisons provided in this review identified that there is an urgent need to transition away from large-carbon-footprint processes, particularly fossil fuels without carbon capture, and to reduce the consumption of construction materials without recycling, as occurs in many of the existing solar and wind energy plants. This transition can be facilitated by seeking alternative and more widely accessible materials with lower carbon footprints during manufacturing and construction. Implementing such strategies can help mitigate climate change and have a positive impact on community well-being and economic growth.

Quantifying and enhancing the energy resilience of zero-emission train station systems against power outages via electrified train-building integrations

The problem of the energy harvesting to face the more and more increasing energy demand is currently challenging. The higher part of our electrical energy (about 80%) is produced by thermoelectrical power plants, which exploit the so-called Non-renewable energy resources (e.g. oil and gas), whose re-growth rate lasts millions of years and are so to be considered as in a fixed amount. On the other hand, the Renewable energy resources are not reduced by their exploitation. For instance, solar and wind energy are obviously both permanent renewable resources, because the energy flow is lower than the energy storage, contrary to the oil resource, where the flow exceeds its natural re-growth rate. Recalling that the renewable energy resources are not able to cover the energy needs (they are often used for the Peak Shaving and not to cover the basis energy demand), it is clear that a new energy resource is necessary to meet the increased energy demand. Moreover, it has to be non-polluting, renewable and continuously available with no interruptions (unlike solar and wind energy, which are affected by the presence of sunlight and wind). This new energy source can be the Nuclear Fusion Energy, a new kind of energy resource that exploits the energy released by the collision and the fusion of two light atoms (such as hydrogen or its isotopes), according to Einstein equation and the mass-energy balance. Although controlled fusion is extremely technologically challenging, a fusion power plant would offer significant advantages over the existing renewable and non-renewable energy sources, such as the practically infinite fuel supply, the absence or air pollution or greenhouses gas during normal operations and the absence of the risk of a nuclear meltdown. The collision of two nuclei can occur if and only if their kinetic energy is high enough to overcome the energy barrier opposing the fusion reaction, due to the long-range Coulomb repulsion. Therefore, the hydrogen gas is heated up to very high temperatures (one hundred million degrees and even more), reaching the Plasma state. Because of this temperature range, the plasma must be confined and must not touch any structure, in order to avoid yielding heat loads as well as mechanical loads. The Tokamak is a fusion machine aimed at the plasma confinement by means of a magnetic field generated by a set of coils surrounding the plasma itself. In principle, the plasma is supposed to be toroidal shaped during normal operations, but this symmetrical condition is ideal, because of many effects which may lead to a non-axisymmetric perturbation of the plasma column. For these reasons, this PhD thesis is devoted to the analysis of some non-axisymmetric plasma perturbations, their effects during the plasma operations and their modelling. The PhD thesis is divided as follows: 1. The first chapter is a brief overview of the main principles the controlled thermonuclear fusion is based on, focusing on the plasma confinement inside a tokamak, the additional heating and the roadmap towards the fusion energy. 2. The second chapter describes the diamagnetic flux evaluation in ITER tokamak for the estimation of the poloidal beta in the presence of non-axisymmetric effects. In particular, the COMPFLUX procedure used for the analysis is presented, then the effects of the main three-dimensional effects are evaluated and the performance of the compensation system is assessed. 3. The third chapter shows the electromechanical effects due to non-axisymmetric halo currents in ITER tokamak. After discussing the mathematical model, the mechanical effects in terms of forces and torques on the structures surrounding the plasma are evaluated. 4. The fourth chapter is devoted to the flux-density field lines tracing and to the identification of non-axisymmetric plasmas. The mathematical model and the procedures developed for the analysis are presented. Afterwards, the standard and geometrical integrators are compared with reference to test cases for which analytical solutions based on the use of Clebsch potentials are available. Finally, the field line tracing technique is used for the non-axisymmetric plasma boundary reconstruction and a novel technique for the 3-D plasma identification is presented and validated. 5. The fifth chapter reports the main conclusions regarding all the topics dealt with this PhD thesis.

This is an exclusively prepared special issue containing papers selected from two well-established events, namely, International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES) and International Conference on Nuclear and Renewable Energy Resources (NURER) and some invited papers in order to make a unique source to reflect the progress in the area of novel nuclear energy technologies. ICENES, with a long scientific tradition, started in 1978 as an autonomous, self-organized event by a group of independent nuclear scientists. The goal was to find unconventional new routes for improving the use of the atomic energy beyond the commercial grounds. It was evident that the field of “strong interactions” still has a broad way for further developments to harness the most powerful source of energy of our universe, in a safe way and with better use of natural resources. The Nuclear Field is plenty of opportunities, and no free from risks, and it is the spirit of human vocation to explore those domains where new findings can change some essential aspects of our world, as is the case of Energy. Nuclear energy is considered the ultimate energy to secure the future of the mankind. Hence, considerable research activities and international collaboration are continuing on innovative nuclear energy systems, such as fusion energy, fusion-fission hybrids, GEN-IV reactors, space nuclear reactors, and power systems and accelerator-driven systems. Asian countries are considerably progressing in the construction of new nuclear reactor as well as in the research and the development of innovative nuclear energy technologies. A sort of new international merging is needed to recover capability and potential in this field of Physics and Technology, which should play an important role in coping with the energy problem and its environmental effects. NURER is a relatively younger one, which was initiated in 2010 as an independent event to look inside the long-term future of energy problems, without forgetting to bridge the gap between the present time and the future, parallel to the ICENES series in alternating years. Both are unique conferences in their nature, considering that nuclear energy, and other newly emerging alternative and renewable energy technologies as complementing and not competing directions with each other. On that way, ICENES and NURER conferences represent two alternating fora, where present and future technologies and systems are discussed under the same umbrella and establish a bridge with closer communication and mutual understanding between nuclear and renewable energy communities. The mankind needs both of them. In that sense, both conferences cover a wide range of topics related to nuclear power production; nuclear hydrogen production; hydrogen energy, energy efficiency, and management; solar energy; wind energy; hydrogen production and storage; renewable energy; fuel cells; bio-energy, etc. In closing, this particular special issue aims to make a unique collection on “progress in novel nuclear energy technologies” from the papers selected from the above listed conferences along with some invited papers which have peer-reviewed, improved, enhanced, and accepted for publication in IJER. The guest editor would like to take this opportunity to warmly thank the editor-in-chief, Prof Dr Ibrahim Dincer; Journal Manager, Peter Creaton; and the authors of the special issue papers to make this special issue a fruitful outcome.

Many remote areas, such as camps located in war-torn regions, suffer from a lack of essential needs such as electricity. This paper offers a solution for an electricity shortage in remote areas. This solution depends on developing a control system for supplying and distributing the electrical power from sustainable energy sources to the load, in addition to monitoring, controlling, and supervising operations. This system is applied to a refugee camp located beside a riverbank. The system depends on a novel electricity generation technique using hydropower without building dams. Since hydropower is sometimes not enough to provide power, it is necessary to incorporate other sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power. The required energy in the camp is between 100–110 kW. The maximum generated value of hydro, solar, and wind powers are 110 kW, 10 kW, and 55 kW, respectively. The use of several power sources with other electric and electronic components creates a hybrid energy system that needs management of the energy flow. Therefore, a control system with a novel technique is suggested to use the entire generated power from sustainable energy sources as much as possible. In addition, the excess generated power is used in other tasks or stored. So, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system represents the core of this system. The use of the sensors with the proposed method is one of the novelties of this research, which improves the system’s performance and extends its life. The proposed control system involves employing the programs that emulate, test, and represent the system. As a result, this control operation provides continuous and reliable electricity to the load using sustainable energy sources at a rate that may reach 100% and optimally exploits the generated power.

The development of India is continuously affected due to some severe issues of the energy crisis and greenhouse gas emission. To overcome or minimize these problems, India should increase the share of sustainable energy sources in an overall generation. Therefore, this work aims to develop a model for the selection of the most sustainable energy sources in India. The model is developed using integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to deal with the number of conflicting and uncertain criteria. The developed model has a unique combination of seven energy alternatives, six criteria, and their related twenty-six sub-criteria. The weights were collected using linguistic terminology to avoid any kind of incomplete or vague information. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (F-AHP) was employed to make a pairwise comparison and to obtain the weights of the considered criteria and sub-criteria. Fuzzy Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (F-WASPAS) used for the ranking of the energy alternatives. Result shows that economic criterion has the highest weight, followed by the environmental and technical criterion. Solar energy obtained as the most sustainable alternative energy source in India. Wind energy was chosen as the second-most sustainable alternative energy source, followed by the hydro and biomass energy. Sensitivity analysis was performed by changing the values of λ coefficient. Results were compared and validated with three other well-known MCDM approaches of VIKOR, TOPSIS, and PROMETHEE - II.

Since the 21st century, China's power industry has been developing very quickly, and the generated electrical energy has been growing rapidly. Although nuclear power, wind power, solar power generations have been increased, thermal power generation still accounts for more than 80% of the total generating capacity. Thermal power provides an important material basis for the development of the national economy. Therefore, the prediction research on China's thermal power generation trend is becoming a topic of great interest. The fuel of thermal power generation-coal, is an exhaustible resource. Due to the exhaustible constraints the fuel, thermal power generation trend is bound to show a similar trend bell curve as the coal production trend, similar to a bell-shaped curve—a gradual increase to maximum output and then a short peak and a gradual decline. To get more accurate results of future thermal power generation, this paper applies the generalized Weng model to forecast China's thermal power generation peak and trend. The result indicted that the peak of China's thermal power generation appears in 2022 with generating capacity of 51,702 TWh. The generating capacity of thermal power will decrease gradually after 2022. Based on the results, the paper proposes some policy recommendations for the sustainable development of China's electrical energy. China should decrease the percentage of the capacity which comes from thermal generation and reduce the dependence on thermal power generation. Moreover, nuclear, hydraulic, wind and solar power should be developed before the thermal power generation peak.

This paper proposes an energy and spinning reserve market clearing (ESRMC) mechanism for wind-thermal power system, considering uncertainties in wind power and load forecasts. Two different market models for the ESRMC are proposed. One model includes reserve offers from the conventional thermal generators, and the other includes reserve offers from both thermal generators and demand/consumers. The stochastic behavior of wind speed and wind power is represented by the Weibull probability density function (pdf), and that of the load is represented by a normal pdf. This paper considers two objectives: total cost minimization and the system-risk-level minimization. The first objective includes the cost of energy provided by thermal and wind generators, and the cost of reserves provided by thermal generators and loads. It also includes costs due to overestimation and underestimation of available wind power and load demand. The system risk level is considered as another objective as wind power is highly uncertain. Multiobjective Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2+ (SPEA 2+) has been used to solve the ESRMC problem. The results of the IEEE 30 bus system demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach.

In today’s world, the use of fossil fuels continues intensively. However, the decrease in raw materials and the damage caused by fossil fuels to the environment every day encourage countries to develop policies toward sustainable energy resources and to introduce legislation for the use of these resources in their domestic legal systems. Another situation that encourages the orientation toward sustainable energy sources is the military intervention of countries against each other or the possibility of such a possibility occurring at any time. It can be said that this situation also caused unpredictable increases in fossil fuel prices. In addition, a country’s dependence on foreign energy is a situation that directly affects its economic independence. As a result, the use of clean energy resources is increasing day by day due to many reasons mentioned above, and legal regulations are made for this. In this context, the main purpose of the study is to try to deal with wind energy, which is one of the sustainable clean energy sources, and its application and procedure in Turkey in the context of the Turkish legal system. In addition, the choice of wind energy in the study can be expressed as the most common among renewable energy sources.KeywordsEnergy lawAdministrative lawClean energyWind energyRenewable energyPublic service

In this paper, a new fuzzy adaptive artificial physics optimization (FAAPO) algorithm is used to solve security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem with wind and thermal power generators. The stochastic nature of wind speed is modeled as a Weibull probability density function. The production cost is modeled with the overestimation and underestimation of available wind energy and included in the conventional SCOPF. Wind generation cost model comprises two components, viz. reserve capacity cost for wind power surplus and penalty cost for wind power shortage. The selection of optimal gravitational constant (G) is a tedious process in conventional artificial physics optimization (APO) method. To overcome this limitation, the gravitational constant (G) is fuzzified in this work. Therefore, based upon the requirement, the gravitational constant changes adaptively. Hence, production cost is reduced, settles at optimum point and takes less number of iterations. The proposed algorithm is tested on IEEE 30-bus system and Indian 75-bus practical system, including wind power in both the test systems. It is observed that FAAPO can outperform BAT algorithm and APO algorithm. Hence, the proposed algorithm can be used for integration of wind power with thermal power generators.

Techno-economic Performance of Wind and Coal-fired Power with CCS Joint Planning

The future developments of nuclear and renewable energy need to be considered together in Japan to realize a safe and clean future electricity system after the Fukushima Nuclear Accident under continuing policies of CO2 emission reduction. On the other hand, one of the most crucial elements of future electricity systems will be the capability for “smart” controls on both supply and demand sides to perform under real-time dynamics. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to propose electricity systems in Japan in 2030 with different mix of renewable energy and nuclear power in supply side and different penetration levels of electric devices such as battery, EV (electric vehicle) and HP (heat pump) under their smart control strategies in demand side. The scenario analysis was conducted using an input–output hour-by-hour simulation model to derive supply–demand balance subject to constraints from technological, economic and environmental perspectives. The obtained excess electricity, CO2 emissions, operation patterns of various devices, etc. in different scenarios were compared and analyzed. The results of the analyses make us understand quantitatively the technological and environmental impacts of the different mixes of renewable and nuclear energy, as well as the corresponding operation patterns of controllable devices under their smart control strategies in different scenarios.KeywordsControl strategyLow-carbonNuclearRenewableSmart electricity system

The energy mix in India relies heavily on the energy sources basically categorized as conventional. Renewable energy (RE) encouragements in India have to be seen from a long term and wider frame of reference, so that it contributes towards reliability and energy security. This paper vital motive is to assess and prioritize the sustainable energy sources in India which are accomplishing utmost factors like acceptability, space limits, availability, gestation period, safety considerations, localization and execution. Sources consider for analysis are solar, wind, hydro and nuclear energy. PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation) have been used to achieve the suitability among the sources of energy and to persuade different factors. This paper concluded solar energy as the most profitable and economical energy source for India, followed by wind energy, than hydro energy and in the last nuclear energy. Nuclear energy acceptability is low in view of the fact of public oppression and the corresponding dangers bound with unbinding power of atom. This paper may help the decision makers to formulate long-term energy policy aiming for sustainability.

Wind power—An assault on local landscapes or an opportunity for modernization?