Design Of Sustainable Energy Systems Research Articles

EPCMSDB: Design of an ensemble predictive control model for solar PV MPPT deployments via dual bioinspired optimizations

With the increasing demand for renewable energy, solar power has emerged as a promising option for sustainable power generation. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of solar power systems rely on the ability to effectively manage their performance, making it essential to develop efficient control models. This paper proposes a novel ensemble predictive control model for solar deployments using bio-inspired optimizations to improve load-connected solar deployments’ performance. The proposed model integrates multiple control devices, including Maximum Power Point Tracker, Proportional-Integral-Derivative, Proportional-Integral, and Fuzzy Logic Controllers, to selectively control the solar Photovoltaic systems. The proposed model incorporates a predictive control operation utilizing an LSTM-GRU (Long Short-Term Memory-Gated Recurrent Unit) with the VARMA (Vector Auto-Regressive Moving Average) model, which can accurately predict the future power generation of the solar system. This feature can facilitate efficient energy management and increase the system’s performance for different use cases. Implement a SEPIC (Single Ended Primary Inductor Capacitor) converter design to improve the system’s overall efficiency levels. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the author conducted experiments using real-world data and compared the proposed results with other control strategies. The results demonstrate that the ensemble predictive control model based on bio-inspired optimizations outperforms the existing control models regarding accuracy, efficiency, and stability levels. The proposed model has the potential to significantly improve the performance of load-connected solar deployments, offering a more practical approach to solar power generation. The combination of predictive control operations with bio-inspired optimizations can facilitate the design of sustainable energy systems with higher efficiency and accuracy.

Sustainability analysis for the design of distributed energy systems: A multi-objective optimization approach

The design of sustainable energy systems requires to enlarge the analysis beyond the traditional boundaries for including the economic, environmental, and societal needs and constraints in the decision-making process. In this regard, this work investigates the conceptual design of distributed energy systems by means of a multi-objective optimization strategy to simultaneously address the economic, environmental, and social aspects in the energy system design. Initially, the water consumption and the inherent safety indicators were introduced and evaluated through two single-objective optimization problems to enhance the analysis of the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. Then, a framework including the total annualized cost, CO2 emissions, water consumption, grid dependence, and inherent safety index was used to perform the multi-objective analysis. To carry out a thorough and comprehensive analysis, four optimization problems including different combinations of the sustainability indicators were proposed and solved. The compromise among the objective functions was identified, and the obtained Pareto sets were explored for elucidating the changes in the design and operating conditions across the non-dominated solutions. According to results, the cost of energy can range between 0.37 and 0.63 €/kWh, the CO2 emissions can vary between 10.6 and 68.5 kgCO2/MWh, and the water consumption can be between 27.8 and 70.2 m3H2O/GWh depending on the evaluated objective. Moreover, it was determined that the safety of the energy system can be improved by increasing the use of the water electrolysis pathway to produce hydrogen and by reducing the capacity of the hydrogen storage unit.

Emerging Tools for Energy System Design Increasing Economic and Environmental Sustainability

Energy is a fundamental element supporting societal development, particularly with the increasing dependency on the Internet of Things. It is also the main contributor to environmental impacts and subsequently, a potential sector for mitigation. Sustainable energy system design considers energy savings and energy efficiency, waste and consumption reduction, process efficiency enhancement, waste heat recovery, and integration of renewable energy. Emerging tools range from advanced Process Integration, modelling, simulation, and optimisation, to system analysis and assessment. This review covers selected emerging studies promoting sustainable system design, including the recent developments reported in the Special Issue (SI) of the 22nd Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (PRES’19). The primary emphasis was to enhance the economic and environmental performance. However, social factors were also highlighted as essential for future sustainable development. The discussion and analysis in this review focus on the most recent developments of (a) heat integration and heat transfer; (b) integrated and newly developed heat exchangers, (c) integration of renewables, and (d) roles in economic and environmental sustainability. The key results are highlighted, and future research ideas are suggested according to their links to a broader context.

How can Urban Manufacturing contribute to a more sustainable energy system in cities?

The paper explores future opportunities as well as challenges arising from urban manufacturing (UM) regarding the design of sustainable energy systems for cities. Global trends affect the type of production (e.g. Industry 4.0) as well as the industrial structure (e.g. convergence of services and production) of UM in cities. This causes new requirements but also new options for the urban energy system. The study presented in this paper examines this area of tension and explores not only the potentials of waste heat use, but also additional electricity demand trough steadily advancing digitalisation. The study illustrates, that over the next few years it will be key to improve the interfaces between actors and sectors: between companies (energy communities), between industry and grid/energy supply company/neighbouring settlement areas and between the sectors heat-electricity-gas-mobility through e.g. power-to-x and possible uses of hydrogen. The paper concludes with a concept for integrating urban manufacturing optimally in the urban energy system for a sustainable energy transition in the future.

Zero energy building (ZEB) in a cooling dominated climate of Oman: Design and energy performance analysis

Zero energy buildings (ZEBs) are targeted by several developed countries around the world which consequently promotes the progress toward achieving ZEBs. The concept of ZEBs is, however, uncommon in developing economies such as Oman. In 2011, The Research Council of Oman has announced a competition to design, construct and operate buildings that embrace sustainability principles. The first five eco-friendly buildings were designed and constructed by academic institutions in different climatic conditions of Oman. This project has significantly contributed toward raising awareness of energy efficiency and renewable energy systems in buildings. This paper outlines the design of sustainable energy systems of one of these five buildings. The ZEB prototype is located at the Sultan Qaboos University campus in Muscat, which is an extremely hot climate as classified by the ASHRAE Standard 169-2013. The ZEB building was designed with full manipulation of natural energy. This paper also reports the experimental results of its one year of operation. The results showed that energy use intensity (EUI) of 103 kWh/m2 was achieved by this building. The building was less than 3% from achieving its net-zero energy source/site/emissions status. Nonetheless, it was able to achieve a positive energy cost status because of the financial credits received from the exported energy, which is subjected to high cost feed-in tariffs. When grid interaction was considered, 40% of the building load was met by site generation. For 33% of the time, this building was independent of the electrical grid, which is comparable to other net-zero energy buildings located in other climates. While several experimental studies for ZEB performance have been described in literature for heating dominated climates, very few experimental studies have been published for cooling dominated climates. Hence, this study aims to fill the gap in the knowledge of energy performance of ZEBs located in this region.

Robust multi-objective optimization for sustainable design of distributed energy supply systems

Sustainable design of distributed energy supply systems involves multiple aims. Therefore, multi-objective optimization is the appropriate concept for sustainable design. However, input parameters are in general uncertain. If uncertainties are disregarded in the optimization, solutions usually become infeasible in practice. To incorporate uncertain parameters, we apply the concept of minmax robust multi-objective optimization for designing sustainable energy supply systems. We propose a mixed-integer linear problem formulation. The proposed formulation allows to identify robust sustainable designs easily guaranteeing security of energy supply. Energy systems are shown to typically exhibit objective-wise uncertainties. Thus, a Pareto front can still be derived.In a real-world case study, robust designs are identified with a good trade-off between economic and ecologic criteria. The robust designs perform remarkably well in the nominal scenario. The presented problem formulation transfers the important theoretical concept of minmax robust multi-objective optimization into engineering practice for the design of sustainable energy systems.

Socioeconomic indicators for sustainable design and commercial development of algal biofuel systems

AbstractSocial and economic indicators can be used to support design of sustainable energy systems. Indicators representing categories of social well‐being, energy security, external trade, profitability, resource conservation, and social acceptability have not yet been measured in published sustainability assessments for commercial algal biofuel facilities. We review socioeconomic indicators that have been modeled at the commercial scale or measured at the pilot or laboratory scale, as well as factors that affect them, and discuss additional indicators that should be measured during commercialization to form a more complete picture of socioeconomic sustainability of algal biofuels. Indicators estimated in the scientific literature include the profitability indicators, return on investment (ROI) and net present value (NPV), and the resource conservation indicator, fossil energy return on investment (EROI). These modeled indicators have clear sustainability targets and have been used to design sustainable algal biofuel systems. Factors affecting ROI, NPV, and EROI include infrastructure, process choices, and financial assumptions. The food security indicator, percent change in food price volatility, is probably zero where agricultural lands are not used for production of algae‐based biofuels; however, food‐related coproducts from algae could enhance food security. The energy security indicators energy security premium and fuel price volatility and external trade indicators terms of trade and trade volume cannot be projected into the future with accuracy prior to commercialization. Together with environmental sustainability indicators, the use of a suite of socioeconomic sustainability indicators should contribute to progress toward sustainability of algal biofuels.

Sustainable energy system design with distributed renewable resources considering economic, environmental and uncertainty aspects

Electricity generation using renewable energy generation technologies is one of the most practical alternatives for network planners in order to achieve national and international Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Renewable Distributed Generation (DG) based Hybrid Energy System (HES) is a sustainable solution for serving electricity demand with reduced GHG emissions. A multi-objective optimisation technique for minimising cost, GHG emissions and generation uncertainty has been proposed in this paper to design HES for sustainable power generation and distribution system planning while considering economic and environmental issues and uncertainty in power availability of renewable resources. Life cycle assessment has been carried out to estimate the global warming potential of the embodied GHG emissions from the electricity generation technologies. The uncertainty in the availability of renewable resources is modelled using the method of moments. A design procedure for building sustainable HES has been presented and the sensitivity analysis is conducted for determining the optimal solution set.

Optimal size and cost analysis of stand-alone hybrid wind/photovoltaic power-generation systems

Design of sustainable energy systems for the supply of electricity need correct selection and sizing to reduce investment costs. In this article, a new sizing methodology is developed for stand-alone hybrid wind/photovoltaic (PV) power systems, using multi-objective optimisation algorithms. Multi-objective particle swarm optimisation algorithm and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II are selected related to their match with the nature of renewable energy sizing problem. A match evaluation method is developed based on renewable energy supply/demand match evaluation criteria, to size the proposed system in the lowest cost. As an example of application of this technique, six different wind turbines (WTs) and also six different PV modules have been considered. The sizing methodology determines a multi-objective design, obtaining the best solutions that the applied algorithm has found simultaneously considering three objectives: inequality coefficient, correlation coefficient, and annualised cost of system. The optimal number of WTs, PV modules, and batteries ensuring that the system total cost is minimised while guaranteeing a highly reliable source of load power is obtained. A management strategy has been designed to achieve higher electricity match rate. Based on the proposed technique, the algorithm developed for different cases, using the climatic condition data of the city Zabol, located in south-east of Iran. Additionally, a study of operating hours of diesel generator in optimal configuration is carried out.