Increase In Electricity Production Research Articles

Cooling Water for Electricity Production in Poland: Assessment and New Perspectives

Sustainable development requires a holistic approach to natural resources and ecosystems to avoid their degradation. Cooling water—water used for cooling in industrial or manufacturing processes and then returned at elevated temperature to a local river or lake—is a common cause of thermal pollution. The purpose of the analysis was to assess how much cooling water is currently abstracted to generate electricity in Poland, what the dynamics of this abstraction in the last 20 years (2000–2019) were, and to what extent this abstraction affects the available freshwater resources in the country and in individual river basins. Moreover, the latest plans for the development of the electricity sector in Poland were analyzed to determine how the implementation of these plans may affect cooling water abstractions and the condition of Poland’s freshwater resources. Trend analysis was performed in order to assess the strength of linear trends in the studied time series. The results show that in Poland from 2000–2019, nearly 75% of water abstracted from surface resources was cooling water used to produce electricity. The dynamics of cooling water abstraction show a clear downward trend of 54.5 million m3 annually, despite a significant increase in electricity production. This decline is likely to continue over the next 20 years, with the major unknown being the planned introduction of nuclear power as an energy source.

Closing the Gap between Carbon Neutrality Targets and Action: Technology Solutions for China's Key Energy-Intensive Sectors.

Facing significant carbon emissions annually, China requires a clear decarbonization strategy to meet its climate targets. This study presents a MESSAGEix-CAEP model to explore Chinese decarbonization pathways and their cost-benefit under two mitigation scenarios by establishing connections between five energy-intensive sectors based on energy and material flows. The results indicated the following: 1) Interaction and feedback between sectors should not be disregarded. The electrification process of the other four sectors was projected to increase electricity production by 206%, resulting in a higher power demand than current forecasts. 2) The marginal abatement cost to achieve carbon neutrality across all five sectors was 2189 CNY/tCO2, notably higher than current Chinese carbon emission trading prices. 3) The cost-benefit analysis indicates that a more ambitious abatement strategy would decrease the marginal abatement cost and result in a higher net carbon abatement benefit. The cumulative net benefit of carbon reduction was 7.8 trillion CNY under ambitious mitigation scenario, 1.3 trillion CNY higher than that under current Chinese mitigation scenario. These findings suggest that policy-makers should focus on the interaction effects of decarbonization pathways between sectors and strengthen their decarbonization efforts to motivate early carbon reduction.

Horizontal microbial fuel cell system producing biosurfactants in response to current generation from waste cooking oil as a fuel

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are recognised as a platform technology, where several processes take place at the same time, including electricity generation. In this study, for the first time, the horizontal MFC system is proposed, capable of synthesizing biosurfactants, where their quantity is directly correlated with the power production. Waste rapeseed oil was used as a sustainable fuel to drive both processes. Initially, all tested MFCs worked as vertical systems where only negligible power generation was noted. Therefore, the MFCs were reconfigured to work as passive, horizontally-aligned system while vertical, agitated control was also investigated. Only a slight reduction of surface tension, resulted from biosurfactant synthesis, was observed in the anolyte in an agitated vertical MFC system, which produced a maximum power density of 2.37 W m−3. The horizontal MFC system led to an increase in electricity production of 104.7 % to 4.84 W m−3. Furthermore, an increase in current generation was accompanied by an increase in biosurfactant production which was observed by the drop of surface tension in anodic chamber to 50.7 mN m−1. Significant, direct correlation (r = -0.77) between power and biosurfactant generation was noted. The results showed that it is possible to establish the energy net positive production of biosurfactants, through an appropriately designed MFC system, and provided the first evidence, that the biosynthesis process is a direct response of current generation. These results represent a novel approach in monitoring of the biosynthesis of surfactants solely through the use of electrical signal and design of bioelectrochemical systems. This process occurs through electrofermentative pathways, assisted with the extracellular electron transport.

Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process methods in changing the damming level of a small hydropower plant: Case study of Rosko SHP in Poland

Small hydropower plants are one of the most important renewable energy sources that do not degrade and consume natural resource. The paper presents a case study of an already operating small hydropower plant (SHP) and a potential increase in its energy production by raising the damming level. Three variants were defined and subjected to detailed analysing. The analyses used the Fuzzy AHP methodology (FAHP), which allowed for identifying the variant that has the best chance of being implemented in the context of administrative, legal and social realities of the country where an SHP is located. The adopted solution will increase electricity production by 108.78 MWh annually, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 86000 kg CO2. The described methodology is of general use and can be applied in any country in the world.

Reliability of onshore wind turbines based on linking power curves to failure and maintenance records: A case study in central Spain

SummaryWind turbine (WT) reliability has come to the forefront of research due to the rapid growth of wind energy in recent years. Reliability information can help understand failure causes and focus maintenance and prevention efforts on the most critical components, reducing costs and increasing profits. This paper offers new insights into WT reliability after analysing the data provided by the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system collected from seven onshore WTs located in central Spain from January 2014 to September 2021. To this end, we propose a method to link SCADA data to failure and maintenance records based on checking whether each 10‐min average time sample was collected when any failure or maintenance action had been reported. These records have been manually mapped to the WT taxonomy based on the standard Reference Designation System for Power Plants (RDS‐PP®) with minor changes. We present three different results: (i) The capacity factor and time‐based availability of each WT; (ii) the subsystem failure rate and downtime to identify the most critical ones; and (iii) each WT power curve with the 10‐min time samples labelled as healthy, under maintenance, or failure states, along with a ranking of the subsystems causing the most failures in each part of the power curves. It is the first time that time samples are linked to failure and maintenance records to visualise their distribution on the power curves. These results can help research point in the right direction to improve reliability and increase electricity production worldwide.

Waste-specific volume for retrospective, predictive assessments, and ranking of practices during normal operation of Russian nuclear power plants

Possibilities of applying the generated radioactive waste-specific volume per unit of produced electricity are shown. This waste specific volume is used for retrospective assessment and forecasting of radio active waste volumes generated at Russian nuclear power plants. According to the available data period covering 2008-2021, the mean and median values of the annual waste-specific volume for each nuclear power plant were obtained. The medians for solid radioactive wastes divided into the categories of very low-level wastes, low-level wastes, intermediate level wastes and high-level wastes are equal to 3.6?10-2, 3.2?10-2, 3.2?10-3, 3.0?10-4 m3(GWh)-1, respectively. For liquid radioactive wastes of the low-level waste and intermediate level waste categories - 1.3?10-3 m3(GWh)-1, 2.4?10-2 m3(GWh)-1, respectively. The highest mean and median values of waste-specific volume for all radioactive waste categories are typical for nuclear power plants with LWGR (RBMK) reactor installations. The forecast based on the plans to increase electricity production by Russian nuclear power plants indicates a likely increase in the volume of radioactive waste generation by 0.7-7.4 % (depending on the waste category) in the period from 2022 to 2027. The waste-specific volume use makes it possible to rank the existing practices of nuclear power plant operation by the volume of radioactive waste generation to justify the criteria for compliance with the International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors sustainability methodology.

Increasing Biowaste and Manure in Biogas Feedstock Composition in Luxembourg: Insights from an Agent-Based Model

Biowaste and manure are resources readily available as feedstock for biogas production. Possible scenarios with increased use of biowaste and manure for biogas production in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are investigated in this study using an Agent-Based Model (ABM) coupled with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). ABMs are particularly suitable to simulate human-natural systems, since they allow modelers to consider behavioral aspects of individuals. On the other hand, when it comes to the assessment of a system’s environmental sustainability, LCA is largely recognized as a sound methodology and widely used in research, industry, and policy making. The paper simulates three different scenarios that reproduce 10 years and can help policymakers building emission mitigation strategies. The aim is to increase the number of biogas plants or change the feedstock composition for anaerobic digestion in Luxembourg whilst observing the expected environmental impacts generated by these changes. The first scenario (Scenario A) is the baseline scenario, which simulates the current situation, with 24 operating biogas plants. The results of Scenario A show that, on average, 63.02 GWh of electricity production per year is possible from biogas. The second scenario (Scenario B) foresees an increase in the manure share (which is initially 63%) in the biogas feedstock composition along with an increase in the number of biogas production plants. The third scenario (Scenario C) only concerns increasing the amount of manure in the feedstock composition without the introduction of new plants. The results of Scenario C show that an 11% increase in electricity production is possible if more farms contribute to the production by bringing their excess manure to the biogas plant. This value is even higher (14%) in Scenario D where more biowaste is made available. The aggregated life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) single scores, calculated with the ReCiPe method, show that Scenario C has the lowest impacts (although by only around 7% compared to the worst performing scenario, i.e., Scenario D), while Scenario D allows the highest electricity production (71.87 GWh in the last year of the simulation). As a result, the inclusion of more livestock farms into already established biogas cooperatives (as in Scenario C) can pave the way for an increase in electricity production from renewables and can bring a reduction in environmental impacts (more than 35% for the Terrestrial Ecotoxicity impact category and more than 27% in categories such as Agricultural Land Occupation, Marine Eutrophication and Water Depletion), thanks to the exploitation of manure for biogas production.

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV): A mathematical approach to evaluate the electrical production of solar PV blinds

Lower prices for photovoltaic systems lead to the spread of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). In this paper, a simple method is proposed to evaluate the electrical power produced by Solar Photovoltaic Blinds (SPB). The equations allow to assess slat mutual shading and view factors and are applicable to any slat inclination, any orientation and any geometry. The possibility that the PV layer does not entirely cover the lamella is also considered. A parametric study is performed to evaluate the impact of geometric factors on the annual yield. The paper shows that 1) The south-east (or -west) orientation provides maximum electrical production. 2) Automating closing PV blinds in summer, when room is unoccupied, allows to increase electricity production by approximately 9% for the south, east and west exposures and 16% for the north exposure. 3) There is a slat distance/width ratio that maximizes the annual electricity produced. It depends on the handling strategy and is about 0.6 for energy optimizing methods and 0.7 for standard uses. 4) Solar tracking that maximizes the radiation entering the room in winter significantly reduces electricity production. 5) The reflectivity of the back of the slats has a little influence on the annual production (up to 5%).

Techno-economic analysis of combined cycle power plants for electricity generation in Nigeria

This paper presents a techno-economic approach to readily assess the profitability or otherwise of combined cycle power plants (CCPPs) for increased electricity production in Nigeria. As a case study for this analysis, a combined cycle gas turbine plant with 650MW installed capacity at Afam VI power station is used to evaluate the installation of a 1000MW and 1500MW CCPP economically. The results and analysis determined a Levelized cost of electricity of N41.57k/KWh and N34.09k/KWh for the 1500MW and 1000MW CCPP, respectively. It signifies an increase of 33.33% and 66.67% in the cost of electricity per kWh between the 1000MW and 1500MW plant capacities respectively, relative to the 650MW CCPP. Therefore, the low LCOE makes it economically viable to install the 1000MW CCPP for electricity production in the country. The paper also proposes upgrading existing gas-fired power plants in the country into combined cycle power plants for improved electricity supply.

Hydroelectric operation for hybridization with a floating photovoltaic plant: A case of study

Hybrid renewable systems increase electricity production by reducing the randomness of sources without greenhouse gas emissions. Literature indicates that further research is still required for large systems connected to the grid. The energy storage capability of hydroelectric plants provides an opportunity to develop new renewable energy generation.This work presents the results of a hybrid preliminary design between an existing hydropower plant (HPP) in Brazil, Santa Branca, and a simulated floating photovoltaic plant (FPV), occupying only 2.8% of reservoir's surface. The study analyzed 20 years of HPP historical data, the methodology proposed the injection of the FPV full power into the system during daytime and the HPP adjusting the production. As this process changed the HPP generation profile, operational limits such as reservoir level needed to be verified.In the period, while HPP generated about 4 TWh, the FPV could add 2 TWh without significantly changing the daily generation of HPP. This increase of 50% in production was possible since there was space available in the reservoir to store water during the day and use it during the night, working as a free virtual battery for the FPV. A 50% increase of the grid connection capacity factor was also observed.

Holistic Life Cycle Assessment of a biogas-based electricity generation plant in a pig farm considering co-digestion and an additive

This study aims to perform an LCA of the co-digestion of pig manure with two co-substrates (corn silage and elephant grass) and an additive (biochar) to produce biogas for electricity generation. Four scenarios were defined: considering only the digestion of pig manure (Base scenario); co-digestion of pig manure with elephant grass-silage (scenario II); co-digestion of pig manure with corn silage (scenario III), and digestion of pig manure with biochar as an additive (scenario IV). The biogas produced was used for electricity generation in a cogeneration system. The thermal energy obtained from the cogeneration system was used to heat the substrate, maintain a mesophilic digestion temperature (38 °C), and heat the pig stalls. Digestate was considered an organic fertilizer in this analysis. Scenario III presented the worst results for most of the impact categories considered in the LCA, with only a positive impact on ozone depletion (ODP). Scenario II presented a lower impact than Scenario III. Using co-substrates and additives in the digestion of pig manure has allowed a considerable increase in electricity production. However, the environmental impacts of using co-substrates are significant in most impact categories, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels in the chain of silage production.

Evaluation of increased electricity production when cooling solar panels

A municipal housing company located in the south of Sweden has energy renovated several buildings with a total of 380 apartments to meet today’s energy standards. Several energy efficient technologies and solutions were implemented and the energy consumption for these buildings were lowered by 50%. One of the buildings functions as a demonstration building for innovative solutions such as low temperature district heating, waste water heat recovery, and solar photovoltaic and thermal (PVT) panels. The solar PVT panels are cooled down with the main purpose to increase the electricity production. The cooling medium for these panels is circulated through two bedrock boreholes to dissipate the collected heat. The heat from the boreholes is then used for an electric heat pump to produce heat to send to the local district heating company. The electricity produced is primarily used in the building. The objective of this paper is to assess the electricity production from real-life outdoor Photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) plant. The plant was installed on the roof top of an energy renovated multi-family apartment building located in the south of Sweden. The cooling of the panels were turned on and off to assess if the electricity production would increase or not. The electricity production did not increase when the cooling was applied. The temperature measuring equipment which was installed at the wrong position and was supposed to measure the temperature at the back of the PVT is needed to compare the efficiency of the PVT plant and draw further conclusions.

Penerapan Teknologi Energi Hybrid: Turbin Mikrohidro dan Panel Surya untuk Menambah Produksi Energi Listrik di Dusun Batu Saeng, Tanggamus, Lampung

APPLICATION OF HYBRID ENERGY TECHNOLOGY: MİCRO-HYDRO TURBİNE AND SOLAR PANELS TO INCREASE ELECTRİCAL ENERGY PRODUCTİON İN DUSUN BATU SAENG, TANGGAMUS, LAMPUNG. Dusun Batu Saeng, Tanggamus, Lampung is one of the areas that utilize the potential of the surrounding natural resources. One of the potentials used is river water which is used as a Micro Hydro Power Plant (PLTMH). However, the source of electrical energy that has been used for 10 years does not appear to be optimal in its utilization. This is because many components are damaged and unfit for use which has reduced their performance. The production of electrical energy from PLTMH is 8 kW which is distributed to 20 houses, this amount will be reduced during the dry season to 6-7 kW. Based on that, it is necessary to replace components such as turbines and generators with a capacity of 10 kW. In addition, during a prolonged dry season, it can also be utilized by installing a 1 kW photovoltaic as a Solar Power Plant (PLTS). Thus, by utilizing water and solar sources, more optimal electricity production can be produced through hybrid energy from PLTMH and PLTS in Dusun Batu Saeng, Lampung. The implementation stages include literature study, site survey, group discussion forum, design and planning, design and preparation, manufacture of PLTMH and PLTS, installation of PLTMH and PLTS, monitoring and evaluation, and final report. The result of this program is an increase in electricity production from 8 kW to 11 kW of hybrid energy from PLTMH and PLTS. It is hoped that in the future this program can be applied to other areas so that they become energy-independent communities.

A comparative techno-economic assessment of manually adjustable tilt mechanisms and automatic solar trackers for behind-the-meter PV applications

Many studies in the literature aim to increase the amount of solar radiation falling on photovoltaic (PV) panel surface to improve its performance. Most of these studies concentrate on solar tracking systems and few studies focus on manually adjustable tilt mechanisms. However, no studies in the literature compare these two methods techno-economically. Therefore, as its main contribution, this study makes a techno-economic comparison of solar trackers and manually adjustable tilt mechanisms. First, the electricity production of fixed-tilt, manually adjustable tilt mechanisms (monthly and seasonal adjustment), and automatic solar trackers (single-axis east-west (SA-EWT), single-axis south-north (SA-SNT), and dual-axis (DAT)) systems are technically analyzed for three provinces in Turkey with different solar characteristics. After that, the systems are compared economically and evaluated over levelized cost of electricity (LCoE), discounted payback period (DPBP), and internal rate of return (IRR). Finally, a detailed sensitivity analysis is made and the impact of changes in initial investment costs and real interest rates is examined. Eventually, the payback period of fixed-tilt systems is found to be 10.3–13.3 years in Turkey. Dual-axis solar trackers provide the highest electricity production increase (30.4–34.6%) compared to fixed-tilt but with the highest payback period (16.7–24 years) among all alternatives. Monthly manual tilt adjustment provides the most feasible solution by decreasing the payback period of fixed-tilt systems by around 8 months to 9.6–12.6 years and with an electricity production increase of 3.6–5%.

The Impact of Coal Quality on Reduction of Environmental Pollution Researched Through Statistical Analysis

Today, the region in general but also Kosovo faces a lack of electricity on the one hand and environmental pollution on the other hand from existing power plants where electricity is produced for the community in general in thermo-plants Kosovo A and Kosovo B. The purpose and importance of this paper is that for the samples taken through the layers (floors) of coal by drilling to extract the calorific values of coal (ETU) and the percentage of ash, whose parameters were analysed in the laboratory of geo-mechanics according to the standards (ISO 9001) in order to eliminate the weak part of coal that would have a positive impact on increasing electricity production but also on reducing environmental pollution within the allowed values according to European Union standards. To carry out this work, a large number of drillings were performed from which 91 samples were taken at different depths, these samples were analysed and, at the same time, statistical processing was done in order to find the average caloric value of (ETU) and the content of ash with the lowest value, these parameters will help us to determine the method to be applied during the exploitation in order to create better conditions for the transport process to the power plants by means of conveyor belts and, at the same time raising the quantity of energy production and reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2). Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-08-05 Full Text: PDF

Overtourism: The Impact of Tourism on Madeira’s Social and Economic Environment

The main goal of the analyses presented in the article is to identify the phenomena and consequences concomitant with the phenomenon of overtourism in the economic (with particular emphasis on energy) and social dimensions, regarding the Portuguese island of Madeira. The starting point for considerations includes a review of the issues that define the theoretical framework of “excessive tourism”, as well as a discussion of the most important determinants of the socio-economic development of Madeira. Then, the results of own research are presented, including the original analysis of existing data on electricity production, population growth and the number of overnight stays, as well as the results of a survey conducted in April 2021[1], among both permanent residents and tourists visiting the island. The obtained results indicate, among others, that for each increase in the number of overnight stays by 1%, the production of electricity increases by 0.597%; and for every 1% increase in the number of inhabitants, there is a 5.617% increase in electricity production. At the same time, the data on the number of inhabitants indicates a population growth rate close to zero, and thus a higher level of consumption will come from the tourist sector. Based on the results of the survey, key problem areas have been identified (including, for example, issues related to the sense of local identity, security or relations between tourists and residents). The volume of tourist traffic has also been assessed, and a number of reflections and recommendations have been formulated to limit the negative effects of “excessive tourism”.
 
 [1] More information about research and obtained results are available in the following publications (Majdak et al. 2021a; Majdak et al. 2021b).

Analysis of Immersion Depth in Cooling a Photovoltaic Module by Water Immersion: An Experimental Study

Photovoltaic systems are one of the important methods used to obtain electricity from solar energy. Photovoltaic module temperature and the angle of incidence of solar radiation are the most important factors affecting the electrical energy obtained from the photovoltaic module. There are many experimental and numerical studies in the literature on increasing electricity production by cooling photovoltaic modules. Cooling with air, liquid, phase change materials, thermoelectric effect, and immersion in water are the commonly used cooling methods. In this study, the cooling of the photovoltaic module by the water immersion method was experimentally investigated. In addition to the results of the related studies in the literature, analyzes were made for different immersion depths and the most appropriate immersion depth was tried to be determined. Three scenarios, 5 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm immersion depth were investigated in the immersion of the PV module in liquid. As a result of immersion of the PV module in water, the PV module temperature decreased, and the voltage output increased for all parameter values. The highest voltage increase was obtained for 5 cm immersion depth (7.85%). Although PV module temperatures decreased with increasing immersion depth, the voltage output decreased after 5 cm immersion depth.

Green Ammonia as a flexible hydro-electricity carrier for Nepal

An increase in the installed capacity of Hydroelectricity in Nepal in 2022 by 122% compared to that in 2021 is a major milestone in power production in the country. This increase in electricity production will make the country self-sufficient in electricity for the first time in the last three decades. The future growth of hydropower installations in Nepal is expected to rise much beyond the local consumption and is forecasted to reach as much as 3500 MW surplus energy by 2028. Most of the hydropower projects built and under construction are run-off -river type, due to which the power generation is highly seasonal and results in the poor load factor. There is a need for Nepal to plan the effective use of surplus power and the seasonality variation of hydro-energy. Producing green ammonia from hydroelectricity and its utilization in industries and commercial sectors can be one of the options for the storage and transportation of surplus hydroelectricity in Nepal in the future. With the flexibility of usage, and given the fact that the required technologies and infrastructures for safer transportation, distribution, and ammonia application are already in place; ammonia can be a viable option to be a hydro-electricity carrier of the future in Nepal. This paper studies the potentials of ammonia as a hydroelectricity carrier and its application as a chemical commodity in the industries and transportation sector. The different chemical attributes of ammonia along with the production technologies, economies of ammonia production, storage, transportation, and its subsequent application are studied. This study concludes that utilization of ammonia as a hydro-energy carrier and its usage as a chemical commodity in the industries, green fuel in the transportation sector can be a good opportunity to lead the country towards sustainable and renewable energy economy.

Design and development of self-cleaning PV sliding system

Abstract This study describes the designing steps of the proposed self-cleaning system for the photovoltaic (PV) system and experimentally investigates the effectiveness of the proposed self-cleaning PV sliding system for solar power plants under all Indian climate conditions. To investigate the performance of the proposed self-cleaning PV sliding system, we used three PV panels of 20 W with a sliding structure and another set of three PV panels of 20 W with a traditional (fixed) technique, and recorded the output power for the period of December 2019 to April 2021. The experimental results show that the proposed self-cleaning PV sliding system improved efficiency by 18.3%, 13.3% and 6.4%, respectively, in the summer, winter and post-monsoon seasons when compared to the fixed PV system. The results also revealed that energy consumption was very low when compared to the amount of energy gained. The proposed system not only cleans the PV system, but also protects it from hailstorms. The results of this study show that there is a significant improvement in PV efficiency and thus an increase in electricity production under all climate conditions.

Optimal Placement of Hybrid Wind-Solar System Using Deep Learning Model

In this paper, we develop an optimal placement of solar-wind energy systems using restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM). The RBM considers various factors to scale the process of optimal placement and enables proper sizing and placement for attaining increased electricity production from both wind and solar systems. The multiobjective criterion from both solar and wind energy farms simulated on MATLAB simulator shows an increased number of accuracies with reduced mean average error and computation time during training and testing. The results show that the RBM achieves improved rate of finding the optimal placement with a lesser cost and computation time of lesser than 2 ms than other methods.