Energy Supply Infrastructure Research Articles

An Overview of Parameter and Cost for Battery Electric Vehicles

The launch of both battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the global market has triggered ongoing radical changes in the automotive sector. On the one hand, the new characteristics of the BEV powertrain compared to the combustion type have resulted in new central parameters, such as vehicle range, which then become an important selling point. On the other hand, electric components are as yet not optimized and the sensors needed for autonomous driving are still expensive, which introduces changes to the vehicle cost structure. This transformation is not limited to the vehicle itself but also extends to its mobility and the necessary infrastructure. The former is shaped by new user behaviors and scenarios. The latter is impacted by the BEV powertrain, which requires a charging and energy supply infrastructure. To enable manufacturers and researchers to develop and optimize BEVs and AVs, it is necessary to first identify the relevant parameters and costs. To this end, we have conducted an extensive literature review. The result is a complete overview of the relevant parameters and costs, divided into the categories of vehicle, infrastructure, mobility, and energy.

The Concept of Development and Implementation of High-Speed Transport

The article discusses the issues of implementation and organization of high-speed transport. The objective of the article is to consider possible options for implementing highspeed (HS) motion systems using the principle of magnetic levitation, which will ensure high speeds for delivery of goods and carrying people over long distances. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to develop an engine and technical solutions for design of HS rolling stock, make decisions on energy supply infrastructure and the HS track, address safety issues and new control systems considering the state of the infrastructure and its design elements. The article discusses several options for implementation of high-speed transport systems, differing in the power supply system, current collection and track based on the magnetic levitation approach. An original approach is proposed in implementation of magnetic levitation transport using the technology of electromagnetic guns designed to implement traction forces of a magnetic levitation vehicle. The advantage of this approach is that it opens the possibility of maneuvering for the vehicle while driving. This allows to abandon switch turnouts, now significantly limiting the use of magnetic levitation transport. A mathematical model describing interaction of an electromagnetic gun and supermagnets located on the track is considered. In constructing the model, methods of the theory of electromagnetic field and interaction of magnetic bodies were used, and when constructing a model of interaction of rolling stock with a magnetic track, methods of mathematical algebra and the Cauchy theorem were used. The article discusses various principles of organization of movement using the magnetic levitation for urban, suburban, and intercity transport.

Conflict Resilience of Water and Energy Supply Infrastructure: Insights from Yemen

Political instability and conflicts are contemporary problems across the Middle East. They threaten not only basic security, but also infrastructure performance. Supply infrastructure, providing basic services such as water and electricity, has been subjected to damage, capacity deterioration, and the bankruptcy of public providers. Often, in conflict countries such as Yemen, the continuity of basic supply is only possible thanks to adaptation efforts on the community and household levels. This paper examines the conflict resilience of water and energy supply infrastructure in Yemen during the armed conflict 2015–today. It contributes to resilience studies by linking knowledge on state fragility and conflicts, humanitarian aid, and infrastructure resilience. The paper presents adaptation responses of communities and public entities in the water and energy sectors in Yemen and critically evaluates these responses from the perspective of conflict resilience of infrastructure. The gained insights reaffirm the notion about the remarkable adaptive capacities of communities during conflicts and the importance of incorporating community-level adaptation responses into larger efforts to enhance the conflict resilience of infrastructure systems.

Smarter Smart District Heating

This article reviews modern district heating systems (DHS), with the main emphasis on the new challenges in modeling, operation, and planning. We give a brief historical overview of evolution of heating systems around the world and provide the description of DHS in the countries where they constitute a substantial component of the energy supply infrastructure. Main modeling approaches are then reviewed. The review is followed by discussion of the major challenges in modern DHS: active consumers, state estimation, control issues, and future challenges of the operation under uncertainties.

A Fuzzy Demand-Profit Model for the Sustainable Development of Electric Vehicles in China from the Perspective of Three-Level Service Chain

Electric vehicles have great potential in dramatically reducing environmental pollution, which has become an important strategic direction for future sustainable development. With the influence of policy support and market, the construction of new energy supply infrastructure in China has achieved remarkable outcomes. However, according to the actual use of the new energy supply facilities, there is still a severe imbalance between long queues and unattended charging stations in some areas. Therefore, this paper aims to establish a fuzzy demand-profit model to accurately optimize new energy supply from the perspective of the three-level service chain. Then, based on authoritative historical sales data of electric vehicles in China in 2011–2018, the model is used to analyze the fuzzy demand for electric vehicle charging capacity. The research results indicate that the fuzzy demand-profit model is an effective tool to promote the coordination of new energy supply, which will provide support for the sustainable development of electric vehicles in China.

Sustainable Liquefied Natural Gas Supply Chain Management: A Review of Quantitative Models

Natural gas is an essential fuel in the transitions towards a sustainable energy future as it is considered a cleaner source of fuel when compared to other hydrocarbon sources. To enable natural gas delivery from the producer to consumers, natural gas is liquified to enhance transportation efficiency and reliability. The main contribution of this paper is to develop sustainable LNG supply chain through a review of different sustainable supply chain management tools and assessing their applicability in managing LNG supply chains. Energy security has evolved to include the protection of the entire energy supply chain and infrastructure rather than a consideration for the availability of resources alone. There is a particular focus on coupling sustainability and resilience/risk as part of the need to develop integrated approaches to manage energy supply chains to deliver cargo at minimal cost and environmental impact, and to ensure that supply chains can overcome vulnerabilities withstanding potential disruptions to the supply chain. Outcomes of this review demonstrate the possibility to develop multi criteria models, which consider sustainability dimensions within the LNG supply chains and to integrate parameters that form part of the annual delivery plan ensuring day to day LNG supply chain planning consider multiple objectives.

Integration of Different Individual Heating Scenarios and Energy Storages into Hybrid Energy System Model of China for 2030

Traditional energy supply infrastructures are on the brink of facing a major transformation due to energy security concerns, environment pollution, renewable energy intermittency and fossil fuel scarcity. A hybrid energy system constitutes the integration of different energy carriers like electricity, heat and fuel which play a vital role in addressing the above challenges. Various technological options like combined heat and power, heat pumps, electrolysers and energy storages ease out multiple carrier integration in an energy hub to increase system flexibility and efficiency. This work models the hybrid energy system of China for the year 2030 by using EnergyPLAN. Atmosphere decarbonization is achieved by replacing conventional coal and natural gas boilers with alternative individual heating sources like hydrogen operated micro combined heat and power natural gas micro combined heat and power and heat pumps. Moreover, rockbed storage as well as single and double penstock pumped hydro storages are added in the proposed system in order to cope with the stochastic nature of intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar photovoltaic. The technical simulation strategy is employed to analyze the optimal combination of energy producing components by determining annual costs, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The results substantiate that a heat pump and double penstock pumped hydro storage addition to the individual heating and electricity network not only proves to be an economically viable option but also reduces fuel consumption and emissions.

Optimal economic dispatch of combined cooling, heating and power‐type multi‐microgrids considering interaction power among microgrids

With the rapid growth of microgrids, many regional multi-microgrids systems emerge gradually with microgrids being integrated to the certain distribution network. By connecting each microgrid using cables and coordinating interaction power among microgrids, the total operation cost of multi-microgrids system can be decreased. On the basis of modeling a variety of energy supply and storage devices, this paper proposes an energy supply infrastructure for combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) microgrid on centralized and interconnected energy exchange network, and energy loads are subdivided into cooling load, thermal load and power load. Then the optimal economic dispatch model considering interaction power among microgrids is proposed in this study for CCHP type multi-microgrids, and energy balance constraints are established according to load types. This model not only takes into account the power interaction between microgrid and the distribution network, but also considers the power interaction among microgrids. The objective is the minimal total operation cost of CCHP type multi-microgrids system. In case studies of Sino-Singapore district, Tianjin, China, the output power of pre-defined equipment and the total operation cost are compared under two different operation mode, coordination mode and independence mode, which verifies the effectiveness and economy of the proposed model.

DC Micro Grid for Energy Efficient and Flexible Production

A volatile energy supply combined with rising demands for power quality poses new challenges to a sustainable and cost efficient manufacturing. Therefore, industrial facilities tend to transform its energy supply infrastructure more and more from a consumer only to a smart micro grid. Onsite energy production, highly dynamic energy consumption, as well as an increasingly complex interface to the energy system require an advanced onsite grid and energy sensitive production management. This paper presents a concept of an industrial DC Micro Grid with real time grid management. The results of the system implementation within a pressure die-casting production system show an increase in energy flexibility while securing power quality and reducing energy supply infrastructure. The key to the system operation is a decentralized control using the net voltage as a control value to balance energy demand and supply.

Optimum option of selecting Energy Supply Infrastructures for Power Generation in Zambia

Optimum option of selecting Energy Supply Infrastructures for Power Generation in Zambia

The Societal Costs of Deep Decarbonization in China

The deeply decarbonized energy economy would be achieved by the efficient power generation and low-carbon end-use equipment and infrastructure, which relies on the fixed cost investments in these items. In this study, we calculated the societal costs by the incremental energy system costs, which are defined the cost of producing, distributing, and consuming energy in a decarbonized energy system. We assess the transformation of the energy system including the major changes in energy supply and end use technology and infrastructure and its related energy costs. The investments in the highly efficient end use of energy, decarbonization of electricity and other fuels including biomass, petroleum, coal, natural gas and switching of end uses to electricity and other low-carbon supplies are calculated. The primary results show that the reference case shows a modest 15% increase in total final energy use, a 9% increase in CO2 emissions relative to 2014 levels, while the deep decarbonization case shows a 20% decrease in total final energy use and an 65% reduction in total emissions. The total societal costs, calculated by summing these three categories costs can be used for assessing the expected cost to achieve the target of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, which can provide theory for implications of low-carbon technology and infrastructure changes for the energy economy and policy.

SOC Development at Forschungszentrum Jülich

In order to become a substantial part of the energy supply infrastructure in the course of the German “Energiewende” (energy system transition), SOFC plants in the power range of 100 kW or larger must be realized. Scale up of units will become even more important in the field of electrolysis to balance electricity conversion and consumption. Therefore, currently one of the main goals of SOC development at the Forschungszentrum Jülich is the development of single stacks in the 15 kW power range as a basis for development of larger units. The core structural feature is a planar-type window frame stack-design, which allows the integration of standard-sized cells, e.g., 10 ×10 cm², in a 2 × 2 array. Based on this design, the 15 kW stack will consist of six sub-stacks, each having 20 planes. Initial operational results with such a sub-stack are reported. Aiming towards stationary applications, long term behaviour is of great importance. The 'world-record' short stack is now in operation under load for more than 80,000 hours, showing an average voltage degradation rate of 0.6%/kh, which decreased to less than 0.3%/kh in the last 30,000 hours. Next to long term stability, electrical net efficiency plays an important role. A net efficiency of 57% could be demonstrated with a 5 kW system operated with methane at 93% fuel utilization using low temperature anode off-gas recirculation. For stationary applications, a concept was developed and proven that allows safe system operation without additional forming gas.In the case of mobile applications such as range extenders or APUs in trucks, the dynamic behaviour is of greater importance. Therefore, the Jülich lightweight cassette design has been advanced with the potential of improved thermomechanical properties using glass sealing instead of metal soldering to integrate the cells into the cassette frame.Growing emphasis is placed on the development of high temperature electrolysers (SOEC). Currently, a standard two-layer short stack is in operation for more than 18,000 hours in electrolysis mode at a current density of -0.5 A.cm-², showing a voltage degradation of less than 1%/kh. Since in the field of energy storage and electricity production based on renewable energy, the reversible operation of such systems is of great interest, the concept of a 5 kW r(eversible)SOC plant has been devised and is now under construction. A 5 kW stack in a system configuration, representing the fuel cell part of the rSOC system, was operated successfully with a hydrogen utilization of 80%.

SOC Development at Forschungszentrum Jülich

In order to become a substantial part of the energy supply infrastructure in the course of the German “Energiewende” (energy system transition), SOFC plants in the power range of 100 kW or larger must be realized. Scale-up of units will become even more important in the field of electrolysis to balance electricity conversion and consumption. Therefore, currently one of the main goals of SOC development at the Forschungszentrum Jülich is the development of single stacks in the 15 kW power range as a basis for realization of larger units. Initial operational results with the adapted stack design are reported. Results of long-term operation in fuel cell and in electrolysis mode are presented as well as activities in the field of systems development and operation. This also includes the development of a 5 kW rSOC (reversible Solid Oxide Cell) system.

Emissions from oil and gas operations in the United States and their air quality implications

ABSTRACTThe energy supply infrastructure in the United States has been changing dramatically over the past decade. Increased production of oil and natural gas, particularly from shale resources using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas in 2014. This review examines air quality impacts, specifically, changes in greenhouse gas, criteria air pollutant, and air toxics emissions from oil and gas production activities that are a result of these changes in energy supplies and use. National emission inventories indicate that volatile organic compound (VOC) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from oil and gas supply chains in the United States have been increasing significantly, whereas emission inventories for greenhouse gases have seen slight declines over the past decade. These emission inventories are based on counts of equipment and operational activities (activity factors), multiplied by average emission factors, and therefor...

Strategic trends and barriers for future energy policy

ABSTRACTGlobal investment in energy supply infrastructure of 38 trillion dollar is required over the period 2011–2035. Sustainable energy future of world will be influenced by some strategic trends. These trends are nuclear energy policy after Fukushima, climate change policy, developments in global oil market, renewable energy, shale gas, and electricity access problem. The basic goal of this study is providing some information of strategic trends and barriers for global energy policy.

A Billion Dollar Investment: The Profitability of Investments in Emergency Energy Sources to Supplement Energy Infrastructure of Regions Vulnerable to Prolonged Outages

The American economy suffers a $150 billion annual loss inherent to power disruptions. American economic and societal structures are increasingly energy dependent, and often solely on grid supplied energy sources. American's great dependence on the expansive national power grid conveys the need to encourage investments in emergency back-up alternate energy sources. Hurricane Katrina proved the most expensive natural disaster in the history of the United States. The storm exposed the country to the vulnerabilities faced with prolonged power outages. When New Orleans’ hospitals experienced total depletions of power physicians were left hopeless. Patients, in the world’s leading energy producer, lost their lives because they needed power dependent technology. The costs of natural disasters have significantly increased over the past twenty years. Though this is often attributed to climate change, it is rarely considered with the recent expansion of the nation’s digital economy, which is disproportionately impacted by interruptions in energy supply. This article focuses on the immense economic benefit of grid independent back-up energy sources, especially within the regions that are most vulnerable to prolonged energy outages. It is vital the North American Electric Reliability Council along with the entire energy regulatory community encourage expansion of back-up, grid independent energy sources for efficient, fiscally responsible disaster response. No previous articles have considered the costs of developing and interconnecting Distributed Generation into the current energy supply infrastructure congruent to costs avoided through greater resiliency. This article is the first to analyze the economic and societal benefits of investing in reliable back-up energy sources. Investments in Distributed Generation would curtail billions in losses incurred by the U.S. economy inherent to disruptions in power, and save the lives of many Americans.

Optimization of novel charging Infrastructures using linear programming**Funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infras-tracture, following a decision of the German Bundestag represented by TV Rheinland. FKZ: 16SNI006C (fund ID).

Abstract: Future traffic that will be accompanied by higher alternative drive concepts will pose as a challenge when it comes to corresponding energy systems. Whereas today’s conventional energy supply infrastructure (in form of gas stations) has not been optimized for the integration of charging processes into vehicle operation, the inevitable development of alternative energy supply systems and infrastructures will pose as a chance to reevaluate and optimize them accordingly This paper will show that with currently available charging powers charging processes can be integrated into urban traffic operations without the need for explicit charging halts or detours (e. g. at traffic lights) and present a method for the analysis of microscopic traffic scenarios and the optimal placement of corresponding charging stations.

A Sustainable Approach to the Harmonization of Electric Power Availability with the Mining Industry in Africa: a Case Study of Mozambique

It remains for a sustainability study to consider how to meet social needs for energy services in the realization of sustainable development, because globally about 2 billion people still have no acess to modern energy. It is therefore necessary to draw attention to energy access - w million deaths annually are associated with the indoor burning of solid fuels. Energy-supply infrastructure globally needs a cumulative investment of US$25.6 trillion for the period 2008-2030, and African portion of this investment is estimated at US$454 billion. Power generation that is dependent on the mining industry seems to be a worthwhile subject for considering the combination of energy availability with national development, so this strategy is discussed, with the focus on a case study of Mozambique: it can be estimated that self-supply system in the mining industry actually export a certain amount of power to national and regional markets, and they may be an opportunity to generate low-cost power through the use of discard coal from coking coal export operations. However, Mozambique should prevent discard coal from becoming a hazardosu load; mercury is on of the most toxic element in coal and its by-products. Political strategies that solove a socio-economic problem but cause an eneviornmental one should be avoided if sustainable development is to be properly realized.

A coastal vulnerability and environmental risk assessment of Loughor Estuary, South Wales

An environmental risk assessment of the Loughor Estuary northern shoreline, in South Wales was carried out by adapting a previously developed Coastal Vulnerability Index). It was established utilising readily available physical parameters to determine vulnerabilities without the need for expert technical interpretation. The Coastal Vulnerability Index was used to determine vulnerability and to assess mesoscale applicability and simplicity of use for an estuarine environment. Assessments identified that the most critical physical parameters affecting vulnerability along this shoreline were coastal slope and beach width. Results highlighted that this shoreline was vulnerable and that a significant percentage of residential housing, transport and energy supply infrastructure are located in highly vulnerable areas. It was also noted that there is a concentration of future re-development sites in similarly vulnerable locations. The Coastal Vulnerability Index can be adapted depending on type of coastal environment and used as a planning tool to establish risk and vulnerability. This work demonstrates that the methodology can be adjusted for estuarine or coastal environments at local or regional scales, and can be used to justify in-depth studies for coastal defence.

Early warning signals for critical transitions in power systems

Several episodes of sudden large scale disruptions in electrical service deeply impacted both the social stability and economic development in affected countries. The prevention of such catastrophic incidents poses huge challenges for reliability study and operational practices in power systems. Studies in other scientific fields show that, upon reaching a tipping point, complex dynamical systems can experience sudden transitions into a contrasting state. These transitions may be predicted through behavioral changes in some statistical measures of the system state. Inspired by these studies, this paper proposes an analysis of the critical transition in power systems from a long-term perspective. The evolution of the operational “stress” and its cyclical variation due to a slowly increasing demand and system expansions is simulated on a test system. The disturbances and the resulting failures under different stress levels are studied. Our analysis identifies the statistical trends known as flickering and critical slowing down in the operational and the recorded outage data along the simulation. These statistical changes can be used as early warning signals of the upcoming operational state which is more prone to a catastrophic blackout. The development of such early warning signals is the key to reaching higher levels of reliability in the energy supply infrastructure that society requires today.