National Power Research Articles

A new multi-function smart electricity measurement device

Algeria's national gas and power provider is called Sonelgaz. It is in charge of producing, distributing, and transmitting power throughout the nation. Sonelgaz has encountered several difficulties in effectively supplying electricity to consumers and keeping track of their usage over the years. One of the primary problems is that client consumption is not accurately metered. Algeria has a large number of old power meters that don't give precise readings of the real electrical usage. Customers receive inaccurate bills as a result of this. It also makes it more challenging for Sonelgaz to monitor usage trends and detect power thieves. Poor metering infrastructure has led to disputes between Sonelgaz and customers over excess bills. In recent years, the idea of a smart power meter has become increasingly popular all around the world. Traditionally, readings must be taken in the meter reading room. As a result, tracking and keeping tabs on your electricity usage is a time-consuming and annoying chore. Furthermore, a lot of us worry about our large electricity bills at the end of the month, therefore, we have to periodically check the energy meter. However, what if we could track how much electricity we consume from anywhere in the world? In this paper, we will develop a new multi-function smart electricity measurement device using an ESP32 microcontroller and the mobile Blynk app. The smart electricity measurement device displays the voltage, current, power factor, and power consumption in real time. In addition, it displays the cost of electricity in dollars and the total energy consumed in kWh, saving you both time and money. The consumer's electricity will be remotely off if the bills are not paid.

Analysis of the National Power Grid from Romania in the context of identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring energy security

Analysis of the National Power Grid from Romania in the context of identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring energy security

Exploring One Colombian Adolescent’s Diverse Literacies in his Rural Community

A deficit view of rural language learners’ out-of-school literacy practices has permeated formal educational and language policy globally. Intergovernmental organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for instance, have often portrayed rural learners in Global South countries as having literacy deficits if their language skills are not in alignment with the practices valued in school contexts. These deficit representations are often instrumentalized as a tactic to oppress and exclude rural students’ literacies and language traditions from educational policy and curricula. Throughout this article, the authors – both language educators researching young people’s diverse literacy practices – aim to address and combat such problematic omissions. Following a sociocultural, multiliteracies framework, we analyzed two semi-structured interviews and accompanying artifacts to feature the literacies that a 14-year-old rural Colombian youth engages with daily. Results illuminate the myriad language practices honed outside of formal learning contexts, including family-based literacies, oral and embodied forms of communication, analyzing and composing with multimodal texts, and developing critical skills with digital texts to question national power relations and forge activist identities. The authors discussed the benefits of an expanded view of literacy – particularly for educators – in hopes of contributing to equity-based research advocating the recognition and inclusion of rural students’ vernacular literacies across formal learning spaces.

Alguns elementos da economia política da guerra na história da ordem capitalista mundial

The trajectory of the war complex in the history of the modern West, especially in the Portuguese colonial adventure and its transformation in Brazil as a search for the objective of generating a national power. The war complex in the evolution of capitalisms was born from conservative bourgeois revolutions in Europe and America. Evolution of the war complex to the imperialist phase, as a military-industrial complex. The Brazilian project to forge a military-industrial complex in the second half of the 20th century. Projections of Brazilian capitalism in search of military power.

Estimation of aggregated inertia constant and load damping: A PMU-based analytical approach

A precise, straightforward, and efficient data-driven methodology is introduced to estimate the most important aggregated generation-load parameters of the power system frequency response model i.e., the inertia constant and the load damping. The estimation method depends on defining specific base systems characterized by particular frequency features. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to determine the most suitable base system for each real-time application. The data collected from PMUs is then compared to the attributes of the base system to make accurate estimations of the parameters of interest. The effectiveness of the proposed methodologies is assessed using datasets that include both simulated data from the New York-New England benchmark and actual measurements collected from six historical power system disturbances within a national power grid.

Challenges and Progress in Spent Ion-Exchange Resin Management at NPPs

The management of radioactive spent ion-exchange resins poses significant challenges for NPPs, due to the lack of economically viable and efficient processing technologies. Such a situation necessitates urgent technological solutions. Historically, conventional methods of radioactive waste treatment have struggled to address the unique properties of spent ion-exchange resins, resulting in their gradual accumulation at industrial sites. At present, the accumulation of spent ion-exchange resins at Ukrainian NPPs has reached critical level, so that addressing radioactive waste management within the national nuclear power industry necessitates two distinct strategies: an immediate technological solution to condition and dispose of the accumulated spent ion-exchange resins, and a sophisticated method aimed at eliminating critical accumulation of spent ion-exchange resins in the future. This publication explores the context and the current status of spent ion-exchange resins management at Ukrainian NPPs, highlighting the efforts to develop and implement treatment technologies, both well-known and innovative. Various methods, including geopolymerization, UHF-vitrification, cementation, and decontamination, are assessed and compared for their feasibility and effectiveness. The study emphasizes the need for innovative approaches to yield safer, more stable, and volume-reduced end-products compared to conventional methods. Additionally, the paper discusses ongoing research endeavors and the importance of knowledge dissemination within the scientific community. Despite challenges, there is growing momentum towards finding practical solutions for spent ion-exchange resins treatment, emphasizing the need for continued research and innovation in this critical area of radioactive waste management. By addressing these challenges and advancing technological solutions, Ukraine can mitigate the accumulation of spent ion-exchange resins and enhance radioactive waste management practices in the national nuclear power industry.

Teaching Next-Generation Cyber Warfare

Cyberspace plays a unique and crucial role in an era of a new geopolitical competition between the major powers. Cyber warfare has the flexibility of being launched either below or above the threshold of armed conflict in supporting the achievement of strategic goals and political aims. Meanwhile, cyber maneuvers are also inalienable to maneuvers in other warfighting domains such as land, maritime, air, and space. How can cyber capabilities be harnessed and integrated into joint warfighting? How can these new capabilities be taught to the joint force in a new way? These are the questions that the joint professional military education (JPME) programs should address. In the current JPME curricula, cyber capabilities are taught either in silo or in a way that is loosely connected to conventional military maneuvers. In a sense, they are not seamlessly integrated into the JPME programs. This paper addresses the issues of the current approach as well as their consequences. It intends to explore a new way of teaching next-generation cyber warfare, in which cyber capabilities are not only built into joint warfighting but also used to support the employment of relevant instruments of national power as well as the collaboration with allies and partners. This multi-level integrated approach is enabled by disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). In so doing can cyber capabilities, especially AI-enabled cyber capabilities, be well integrated into the joint warfighting curricula, thus enabling joint force to obtain strategic advantage in the geopolitical competition.

Applying Negative Soft Power? Examining Hungary’s Digital Criticism of the European Union

This study examines how Hungary’s criticism of the European Union (EU) is reflected in its digital diplomacy efforts. It proposes that systematic criticism of the bloc can be seen as a deliberate use of negative soft power, a tactic that involves portraying others in an unfavourable context. To address the research objective, the study examines the Twitter (now known as X) diplomacy of 40 Hungarian government officials in 2021–2022 and identifies EU-related content and criticism through a semi-automatic content analysis. The results show that while a few central government users systematically and explicitly criticise the EU, other actors balance condemnation with neutral and positive posts. The findings, therefore, indicate that Hungary’s systemic weakness limits the pure export of national discourses and forces soft power strategies to mix critical commentary with neutral and positive representation.

Impact of large-scale renewable energy integration on the grid voltage stability

Nowadays, the production of renewable energy is increasing rapidly due to its enormous potential and environmental advantages. Still, the addition of renewable energy to the grid has resulted in some volatility in the electrical system. In this work, the national grid of Ethiopia is used as an example to examine the impact of significant wind power integration on grid stability. In particular, issues with voltage stability in both steady-state and emergency scenarios are taken into account for the network. The dynamic modeling of the wind farm is taken into consideration for contingency-based analysis, and the whole nation's power network, including the largest wind farm in the nation, Adama-II, is modeled for base-case analysis using MATLAB's built-in PSAT software. The result indicates that the bus voltages are within an acceptable standard voltage range for the base-case system. Nevertheless, the wind farm will be disconnected from the network in compliance with the global manufacturer's guideline in the case of a three-phase fault at the network point of common coupling (PCC), where the voltage at PCC is equivalent to 0.045 per unit voltage. The results also demonstrate that the voltage profile throughout the whole nation power network is lower when there is a problem at PCC. As a result, as Ethiopia is building several huge wind farms, it is advised that fault detection and control methods be thoroughly designed before connecting the major wind farms to the grid.

“Salute the strivers”: China’s Internet giant founders and the discursive construction of overwork

Scholarly inquiry into labor issues in the digital industry has primarily centered on workers, with less attention devoted to employers, or entrepreneurs. Turning the scrutiny toward tech entrepreneurs, this article reports the results from a critical discourse analysis of how China’s Internet giant founders are participating in the construction of a long-hours culture through discourse practices. It uncovers that the default assumptions related to tech work, tech workers, and tech firms are carefully designed, taught, and cultivated by tech founders to sustain the exploitative and unsustainable mode of technical production. Situated at the historical juncture of China’s “great reversal” since late 2020, this research examines the dynamic and uneven triangular relationship among the state, entrepreneurs, and workers in technical production. It enriches the analysis of entrepreneurial discourse in the digital industry beyond the Euro-American context and reflects on entrepreneurs’ ambivalent power in late-developing nations.

Investigation on optimization strategy of IoT operation mode based on blockchain

Under the call of the national scientific and technological power, the research in the field of sensor technology has made rapid progress. Many smart devices integrating various technical heights have entered the homes of ordinary people. Making these smart devices increasingly intelligent has greatly improved people’s lifestyles and even changed their lives. With the development of blockchain technology and the development of 5G communication equipment and applications, the industrial model of Blockchain and the Internet of Things can also become an important guide for the development of the Internet of Things. Therefore, this paper studies the optimization strategy of the IoT operation mode based on Blockchain. The research results have shown that the IoT operation mode based on Blockchain is superior to the traditional IoT operation mode in terms of node energy consumption, life cycle, and flux performance. Under the IoT operation mode of the Blockchain, the node energy consumption is reduced by about 1.19J on average, and the flux performance is increased by about 21 on average. This showed that the IoT operation model based on Blockchain is feasible.

Development of the Polish Power Sector towards Energy Neutrality—The Scenario Approach

This article discusses three scenarios for the transformation of the Polish power system leading to the achievement of climate neutrality through investment in renewable energy sources. The scenarios differ in terms of the role played by the selected energy technologies. The scenarios were developed using the balancing tool, the Simulator Polish Power System, which analyzed the development of the national power system in terms of optimal costs of achieving climate neutrality and the lowest possible price of electricity generation. The research shows that under Polish climatic conditions, 100% RES energy can be achieved in the balance, but ensuring the continuity of energy supply, which in future will be generated mainly from this type of source, requires the participation of controllable sources such as gas-fired power plants powered by biomethane and energy storage facilities. The scenarios assume balancing RES sources with 15–25 GW of available gas sources and 40 GWh in electricity storage. The article also discusses factors limiting the suggested scenarios, such as the availability of sustainable biomethane in Poland or limitations associated with the possibility of building onshore and offshore wind turbines.

Assessment of Potential and Techno-Economic Performance of Solid Sorbent Direct Air Capture with CO2 Storage in Europe.

Direct air capture with CO2 storage (DACCS) is among the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options, with the largest gap between current deployment and needed upscaling. Here, we present a geospatial analysis of the techno-economic performance of large-scale DACCS deployment in Europe using two performance indicators: CDR costs and potential. Different low-temperature heat DACCS configurations are considered, i.e., coupled to the national power grid, using waste heat and powered by curtailed electricity. Our findings reveal that the CDR potential and costs of DACCS systems are mainly driven by (i) the availability of energy sources, (ii) the location-specific climate conditions, (iii) the price and GHG intensity of electricity, and (iv) the CO2 transport distance to the nearest CO2 storage location. The results further highlight the following key findings: (i) the limited availability of waste heat, with only Sweden potentially compensating nearly 10% of national emissions through CDR, and (ii) the need for considering transport and storage of CO2 in a comprehensive techno-economic assessment of DACCS. Finally, our geospatial analysis reveals substantial differences between regions due to location-specific conditions, i.e., useful information elements and consistent insights that will contribute to assessment and feasibility studies toward effective DACCS implementation.

The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South

The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South

National Wounds and Gendered Harm: Reframing Abortion Pain in The Worst of Times

In light of abortion’s recurrent political centrality in the United States, examining abortion narratives remains critically urgent. This article analyzes the abortion narratives found in the 1993 anthology The Worst of Times compiled by Patricia G. Miller, which collects individual stories of illegal abortions from the post–World War II years. It analyzes these narratives in the context of the postwar period’s growing sensational political fascination with abortion pain, alongside the second-wave feminist positioning of abortion as the paramount feminist issue and inherent basis of feminist community. Against these discourses, the semi-anonymous narrators of The Worst of Times disrupt hierarchized, universal, and exclusionary models of pain. Rather, this article argues that, in constructing life writing centered around the painful experience of illegal abortion, the narrators’ experiences cohere into relational clusters that evince commonalities while also maintaining differences. In engaging with their painful abortion experiences, these narratives reshape the medical, national, and feminist power structures that attempted to define the pain that abortion signified. In a moment when abortion legislation faces continued assaults, these narratives invite a consideration of how the embodied, personal pain of abortion can facilitate creative models of community that rethink the power structures that restrict reproductive autonomy.

The Impact of Mega Sports Events on the Strength of the National Soft Power: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract This article examines the strategic use of mega sports events as a means to enhance national soft power, exploring the complex interplay between international sports diplomacy and geopolitical influence. The study will examine how these events serve as means of economic and cultural diplomacy and also as platforms for global interaction through a comparative analysis of countries that include South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Germany, and Qatar. Employing a qualitative methodology, the research synthesizes the existing literature and case studies to provide information on the objectives, strategies, and outcomes associated with hosting such events. This study aims to contribute to the larger discussion on soft power and its effectiveness in the modern international arena by analyzing the complex effects of these mega events on national branding. It does this by providing a nuanced understanding of how major international sporting events can affect geopolitical dynamics and shape international perceptions.

The influence of guide vane opening on internal cavitation of Francis turbine

Abstract In response to the theme of national multi energy complementary power grid construction, hydropower stations need to frequently change the opening of active guide vanes. Operation deviates from the rated working condition. And output is adjusted to meet the flexible power demand of users. Cavitation phenomenon as the biggest problem restricting the eccentric operation of Francis turbine. Easily induce cavitation damage to the flow passage components of the unit and shorten the service life of the unit. Therefore, there is a good engineering research background for the cavitation characteristics inside Francis turbines in the process of exploring the variation of guide vane opening. This paper takes a high head Francis turbine as the research object, based on numerical simulation and model test. The results show that the maximum amplitude of the draft tube vortex gradually increases during the process of decreasing the opening. The degree of cavitation is gradually serious, and the streamline distribution of the flow field inside the impeller is uneven. As the opening of the guide vane gradually increases, the vortexof the draft tube gradually decreases. The cavitation degree is weakened, and the streamline distribution inside the impeller is significantly improved. With the increase of the guide vane opening, the low-speed area on the outlet surface of the impeller gradually decreases, resulting in a gradual reduction of the low-speed zone in the straight cone section of the draft tube, a smaller vortex, a weaker cavitation degree. The internal flow distribution of the impeller is significantly improved.

Agri-voltaics near airport facilities. Reconciling the risk of solar glare with power generation

The installation of photovoltaic systems on cultivated land enables both agricultural and green energy production simultaneously. The result is an efficient and inclusive use of land that promotes the rural economy, enables the recovery and maintenance of land and prevents its abandonment when it is considered not profitable. This intent is facilitated in semi-rural areas where there is already the presence of infrastructure connected to the national power grid, but at the same time is limited by other human activities. Runway approach and air traffic control operations impose very stringent constraints on the possibility that photovoltaic panels, reflecting solar radiation, may glare airport operators.This article provides a methodology for verifying such phenomena (control function) and mitigating them by maximizing solar power generation (objective function). Through a case study located in central Italy, positioned near an airport, it was possible to investigate the design variables to protect the landing air routes and the airport control tower.In this case study, with an azimuth angle of 47° and tilt angle of 25°, and thanks to a 5 m high tree screen placed on the edge of the land on which the agri-voltaic installation stands, it is possible to secure airport operations by eliminating all forms of solar glare. At the same time, 21.9 GWh of photovoltaic energy is produced annually, while avoiding the release of 8,773 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Compared with the optimal, unconstrained case, photovoltaic panels arranged in this way decrease their annual energy production by only 6.8 %.

Courts, the state, and democratization in the United States

AbstractThe United States is facing an era of acute democratic fragility. The Supreme Court is often understood as a key countermajoritarian institution that often impedes democratization. But adopting an interbranch perspective, we show that the court has been a stronger champion of democratization in the United States than is typically recognized. National power has generally been necessary to overcome antidemocratic subnational policy, and national state power requires both standard setting and coercion. Using an original dataset of Supreme Court rulings on civil rights and racial equality, we show that the court was an earlier and more consistent champion of racial democratization than is generally understood but that in the absence of cooperation from the rest of the federal government's coercive apparatus, the court's standard‐setting rulings had little impact. These findings suggest the conditions under which the protection of democratic gains might be possible.

A Multi-Temporal Analysis on the Dynamics of the Impact of Land Use and Land Cover on NO2 and CO Emissions in Argentina for Sustainable Environmental Management

This study presents an analysis of NO2 and CO emissions in Argentina, utilizing remote sensing data. This research aims to determine the spatiotemporal distribution of NO2 and CO emissions from 2019 to 2021. It examines the influence of land use and cover on NO2 and CO emissions using various climatic, anthropic, and natural indicators. The year with the highest CO and NO2 concentration was 2020. NO2 exhibited the highest concentrations in built-up urban areas and croplands, notably impacting the capital city and the northern region of Buenos Aires province. Also, CO concentration was influenced by anthropic variable distances to national route, mining extraction, power plants, airports, and urban index (UI). They were also influenced by climatic and natural variables (Palmer drought index, vapor pressure, maximum environment temperature, wind speed, DEM, humidity, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)) for the different uses and land covers. NO2 concentrations were influenced by anthropic (distance to airports, service stations, open dumpsites, power plants, and factories), climatic, and natural variables (Palmer drought index, vapor pressure, wind speed, and DEM) for the different uses and land cover. This research supports sustainable environmental management by guiding the development of effective emission mitigation strategies for improved community health and well-being.