Power Supply Chain Research Articles

Application potential of solar-assisted post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) in China: A life cycle approach

Although post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) has been regarded as a near-commercial technology, the scale-up development of PCC the technology remains hindered by its severe thermodynamic and economic penalties. As a consequence, the solar-assisted carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is emerging recently, which poses a promising possibility to offset the power generation loss caused by the intensive energy consumption from PCC process. Nevertheless, the application potential of the solar-assisted CCS technology would highly depend on its realistic greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation benefit as well as its cost relative to alternative low carbon technologies. Thus, it is required to apply an improved assessment practice to recognize solutions for such sustainable power supply chains, considering an increasing threatening from climate change.In this study, solar-assisted post-combustion CCS processes are analyzed trough a life cycle approach, combing life cycle GHG assessment and life cycle cost analysis. A typical 300MWe coal-fired power plant in China is taken as the case study. Three scenarios are further analyzed: (1) base case integrated with CCS process; (2) base case integrated with CCS and solar-assisted reboiler heating process; (3) base case extended to CCS and solar-assisted repowering process. Results show that the solar-assisted repowering case has considerable advantage in both GHG mitigation potential and cost aspect with superior life cycle GHG reduction rate and life cycle cost of energy removed (LCOR) at 73.7% and 37.2$/tco2−eq respectively. While the solar-assisted reboiler heating case does not have evident competition superiority. It is further highlighted that the GHG emissions from the upstream and transportation stages are also critical for Chinese CCS chains.

Optimizing capacity investment on renewable energy source supply chain

In China, power producers sell renewable energy to consumers through the power market, and have formed a multi-echelon renewable energy source power supply chain (RESPSC). This paper studies decisions on capacity investment for power producers facing a location problem in this dual-echelon RESPSC. We assume that demand and supply are uncertain, while the grid-connected power price is fixed. The problem can be modeled as a Stackelberg game from the perspective of RESPSC. We also analyze the impact of intermittence on profit distribution and risk sharing. From a comparison between centralized vs decentralized capacity investment decisions, we find that site candidates with higher market value should be given priority to invest under centralized decisions, while candidates with lower equivalent cost should be invested in first under conditions of a decentralized decision. The results suggest that RESPSC can be coordinated only if the profit share of the producer is zero, since the revenue share of the vendor decreases as investment increases. Meanwhile, because the intermittent supply of renewable energy affects the cost incurred by producers and the price given by vendors, respectively, power producers and vendors will evaluate the sites in different ways to maximize their own benefits. If disagreements regarding site quality arise between producers and vendors, RESPSC will no longer be effective under decentralized decisions.

Critical analysis of drivers and barriers of sustainable supply chain management in Indian thermal sector

In an attempt to satisfy its ever increasing need for energy, the Indian government has setup a large number of coal fired power plants, which in turn has led to increased socio-environmental hazards such as global warming, acid rain, scarcity of drinking water, reduced crop production, and a stressful work environment. Realising the fact, efforts have been made by government, industry as well, as by the academicians to develop and incorporate sustainable practices in the thermal power supply chains. However, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) implementation is a complex activity owing to its dependence on various factors with a varying degree of influence on SSCM. In light of this, this research has been carried out to explore and evaluate the degree of influence of the factors those that influence SSCM either positively or negatively. It was observed that academic involvement and lack of coordination are the most significant driver and barrier respectively. Knowledge of the influential factors and their ranks will help the decision makers in reducing the impact of the barriers and optimise the benefits derived from the drivers.

Novel Role of Rural Official Organization in the Biomass-Based Power Supply Chain in China: A Combined Game Theory and Agent-Based Simulation Approach

Developing biomass-based power generation is helpful for China to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and to release the targets of carbon emission peak. The decentralized farming method leads to Chinese farmers’ weak willingness to collect and sell crop residues to biomass-based power plants. The purpose of this paper is to solve the issue by proposing a novel biomass feedstock supply model with China’s rural official organization—villagers’ committee, which has great influence on villagers’ decision making. Introducing it into the biomass-based power supply chain is beneficial to motivating farmers’ supplying enthusiasm. A combined game theory and agent-based simulation approach is applied to study the effectiveness of this new supply model. Multiple simulation scenarios are built to study impacts of different simulation parameters, and results show that farmers tend to supply more biomass material for electricity production in the proposed villagers’ committee model, compared with the two conventional supply models, direct-deal and broker models. The supply model incorporating the rural official organization can ensure the feedstock sufficiency for plants. A proper model design depends on the feed-in tariff subsidy for biomass-based electricity, feedstock shipping distance, performance appraisal system of the villagers’ committee, as well as farmers’ utility weights on net income and public service improvement.

A multi-objective sustainable location model for biomass power plants: Case of China

Most of the existing biomass power plant location models and supply chain designs are developed only for the minimization of logistics cost, having neglected the pollutant emissions during biomass feedstock transportation. How to achieve a win-win situation between the two for optimal power plant locations has become a main research direction. This paper, integrating the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, develops a bi-objective 0–1 integer programming model for optimal locations and corresponding feedstock supply chain designs of biomass power plants. Having made improvements to the existing location models, this model is developed basing on the relevant research data of Chinese biomass power generation. A numerical example analysis is done in order to validate the model and to highlight the practicality and effectiveness. It is expected that this model may provide scientific guidance for biomass power plant siting and improve their environmental performance while still remaining economically competitive.

A capacity expansion planning model for integrated water desalination and power supply chain problem

Cogeneration of water and power in integrated cogeneration production plants is a common practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. There are several combinations of water desalination and power technologies which give significant adverse environmental impact. Renewable and alternative energy technologies have been recently proposed as alternative power production paths in the water and power sector. In this study, we examine the optimal capacity expansion of water and power infrastructure over an extended planning horizon. A generic mixed integer linear programming model is developed to assist in the decision making process on: (1) optimal installation of cogeneration expansion capacities; (2) optimal installation of renewable and alternative power plants; (3) optimal operation of the integrated water and power supply chain over large geographical areas. Furthermore, the model considers the installation of carbon capture methods in fossil-based power plants. A case study will be presented to illustrate the mathematical programming application for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (AD) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The case study is solved reflecting different scenarios: base case scenario, integration of renewable and alternative technologies scenario, and CO2 reduction targets scenario. The results show that increased carbon tax values up to 150$/ton-CO2 gives a maximum 3% cost increase for the supply chain net present value. The installation of carbon capture methods is not an economical solution due to its high operation energy requirements in the order of 370kWh per ton of captured CO2. Thus, the Cplex solver in GAMS chooses optimal solutions without installation of carbon capture processes. In addition, higher degree of alternative and renewable energy technologies penetration within the energy mix reduces the overall net present value of the network, and the carbon emissions by 40%, and 12%, respectively.

Implementing technology to improve stakeholder fairness perception

Fairness among supply chain actors is imperative for long term and effective inter-organizational relationships. Due to operational issues within a fresh produce supply chain involving many small and medium players, the coordination and communication will be inefficient. This results in perceptions of unfair behaviour and results in strained supply chain relationships within a food supply chain. The paper proposes the implementation of the MOVIE (Model, Operations, View, Intelligence and Events) model to instigate distributive, procedural and interactive fairness perceptions along the entire supply chain. By communicating on a real-time basis and accounting for user specific access levels, the proposed cloud-based IT system will provide better access to information pertaining to the products, whilst it is being processed by different elements within the supply chain. Through accurate and timely communication of this information, the information that was traditionally communicated only to the bigger and more powerful supply chain actors will be available to every supply chain actor irrespective of size or purchasing power. Though Enterprise Resource Planning systems are plentiful, this has not percolated the food supply chain sector, and the proposed system accounts for such a lack within the food supply chain management context. The implementation of the proposed system will not only improve storage and marketing of easily perishable fruits and vegetables but also effectively improve perception of fairness along the fresh food supply chain, thus contributing to effective supply chain relationships.

A game-theoretic analysis of the government's role on the biomass supply chain construction

ABSTRACTThis research utilises a game-theoretic approach to model and analyse the biomass power supply chain. The problem of the government's policy-choosing is discussed based on the vertical interactions between the three players: the farmer, the biomass power plant, and the government. A sequential game with asymmetric information is established considering the core issues: whether the farmer supplies the biomass to the power plant, what the power plant's optimal purchasing price of the biomass is, and which policy the government chooses. The Nash equilibriums are obtained, and the factors affecting the Nash equilibriums are summarised. Based on the discussion of these factors, the model can be modified to mimic reality by some modifications. An extension will be to include more kinds of asymmetric information. Another extension will be to change the policy objective of the government. Special attention is devoted to the impact of the change of the policy objective, which is caused by the reality of the government's structure, on the Nash equilibrium results.

A decomposition method for large scale MILPs, with performance guarantees and a power system application

Lagrangian duality in mixed integer optimization is a useful framework for problem decomposition and for producing tight lower bounds to the optimal objective. However, in contrast to the convex case, it is generally unable to produce optimal solutions directly. In fact, solutions recovered from the dual may not only be suboptimal, but even infeasible. In this paper we concentrate on large scale mixed-integer programs with a specific structure that appears in a variety of application domains such as power systems and supply chain management. We propose a solution method for these structures, in which the primal problem is modified in a certain way, guaranteeing that the solutions produced by the corresponding dual are feasible for the original unmodified primal problem. The modification is simple to implement and the method is amenable to distributed computation. We also demonstrate that the quality of the solutions recovered using our procedure improves as the problem size increases, making it particularly useful for large scale problem instances for which commercial solvers are inadequate. We illustrate the efficacy of our method with extensive experimentations on a problem stemming from power systems.

産業連関分析によるコジェネレーション導入が及ぼす地域経済波及効果

A combined heat and power (CHP) system supplys those both energies at very high efficiency. It has high potential for reduce CO2 emission from consumer sectors, especially in northern region, which has high demand for heat energy. On the other hand, introducing CHP system has a possibility to change heat and power supply chain and produce economic percussion in the region. In this study, input-industry relation analysis was applied for introducing CHP system in Hokkaido and investigated the potential of economic percussion for the Hokkaido region. The results show that the economic percussion of introducing CHP system cause to reduce in “Electric” division and to increase in “Gas” division. And the effect is different depend on a power source of grid connected electric power which CHP system replace, such as thermal power source and all-mixed power source. The analysis also shows that the economic percussion has effect for the domestic industry sector but not for Hokkaido region.

数字化商业策略之竞争优势—沃尔玛于中国市场之分析

沃尔玛作为零售商的老大，毫无疑问其在全世界范围内都具有统治力。它的营运模式长久以来都是企业争相模仿的标杆。从传统意义上的策略角度来看，整个零售产业具有同构型极高进入门栏非常低的产业特质，应当说零售业是一个模仿障碍很低，竞争压力巨大且生存环境恶劣的产业。然而既便如此，沃尔玛依然能稳如泰山，长久领跑立于不败之地。在过去许多传统文献的研究中，专家学者们对沃尔玛的营运策略众说纷纭，既有谈到差异化竞争优势，也有提及低成本策略。但信息发达的今天，我们看到诸如亚马逊，淘宝，阿里巴巴等众多电商的异军突起，沃尔玛最赖以生存的法宝，强大的买方议价能力已经显现不出明显的竞争优势。相对于电子商务，传统超商的疲态主要显现在物流与服务方面，电商形成的客制化服务，以及点对点的送货上门，使得传统超商所能提供的便利性相形见绌。但本研究认为，类似沃尔玛之类的传统超商，其供应链与物流链都十分强大，如果能够合理使用信息管理系统，重塑消费者的消费习惯，传统超商将能捕获更大的价值收益。因此在本研究中，作者采用经济学中的常用概念，均衡分析，加以结合信息管理系统，力求从数字化商业竞争策略的角度来探讨传统零售商的新出路。同时，利用动态分析与静态分析的质性推导，多角度阐释沃尔玛在实务运作上存在的不足，并提出改善性的建议。供传统零售行业在策略营运上做出参考。 Wal-Mart as a bellwether in retail industry, there is no doubt that it has the dominance in worldwide. The Wal-Mart’s business mode strategy has long time been a benchmark for companies competing to imitate. From the strategy point of view in the traditional, the entire retail industry will face to high homogeneity and low entry barriers; in other words it should be said that the retail industry is a very low barrier to imitate, enormous competitive pressures and poor environment industry. Even so, however, Wal-Mart can still be a NO. 1 in retail industry and then invincible. In the past literature, many of researches focus on Wal-Mart’s business strategy, including different competitive advantages, low-cost strategy and so on. But they negative information technology and digital business strategy. Nowadays, as we seen the sudden emergence of the Amazon etc. electricity supplier, they have already shocked traditional business model. With respect to e-commerce, traditional stores show weakness mainly in the logistics and services. To be more specifically, e-commerce suppliers have customized service and point to point delivery, which the traditional store cannot offer. However, in this study we suggest that, the traditional chain store like Wal-Mart has powerful supply chain and logistics chain. If the traditional chain store can rationally use information management system, they will reshape consumer spending habits and gain benefit. Therefore, in this study, the authors used a common concept in economics, equilibrium analysis, to be combined with management information system, and strived to digitize from the perspective of commercial competitive strategy to explore a new way of traditional retailers. At the same time, this study points out the weakness and disadvantage of Wal-Mart in the real operation by the qualitative research method of dynamic analysis and static analysis as well as multi-angle interpretation, and gives advices to traditional store in the marketing operation.

Risk analysis for renewable energy projects due to constraints arising

Starting from the target of the European Union (EU) to use renewable energy in the area that aims a binding target of 20% renewable energy in final energy consumption by 2020, this article illustrates the identification of risks for implementation of wind energy projects in Romania, which could lead to complex technical implications, social and administrative. In specific projects analyzed in this paper were identified critical bottlenecks in the future wind power supply chain and reasonable time periods that may arise. Renewable energy technologies have to face a number of constraints that delayed scaling-up their production process, their transport process, the equipment reliability, etc. so implementing these types of projects requiring complex specialized team, the coordination of which also involve specific risks. The research team applied an analytical risk approach to identify major risks encountered within a wind farm project developed in Romania in isolated regions with different particularities, configured for different geographical areas (hill and mountain locations in Romania). Identification of major risks was based on the conceptual model set up for the entire project implementation process. Throughout this conceptual model there were identified specific constraints of such process. Integration risks were examined by an empirical study based on the method HAZOP (Hazard and Operability). The discussion describes the analysis of our results implementation context of renewable energy projects in Romania and creates a framework for assessing energy supply to any entity from renewable sources.

The supply voltage apparatus of the CUORE experiment

The Electronics system of experiments for the study of rare decays, such as the neutrino-less double beta decay, must be very stable over very long expected runs. We introduce our solution for the power supply of such an experiment, CUORE. In this case the power supply chain consists of a series of ACDCs, followed by DCDCs and then Linear Regulators. We emphasize here our approach to the DCDC regulation system that was designed with a complete rejection of the switching noise, across 100MHz bandwidth. In the experimental layout the DCDC will be located far from the very front-end, with long connecting cables (10m). We introduced our very simple and safe solution to prevent huge over-voltages, due to the energy stored in the inductance of the cables, generated after the release of accidental short circuits, so avoiding destructive effects. Some micro-controllers are present on every board and take care of the DCDC operation. These micro-controllers are managed from the control room, via CAN BUS protocol coupled via optical fibres. CUORE is an array of 1000 cryogenic detectors that will need 30 of our DCDCs.

Green Business Practices for Software Development Companies

This paper reports the findings of a text analysis of the corporate sustainability reports of eleven large scale Indian Software Development Businesses for the period of 2012 to 2014. The results shows that there are twenty two reported components of software development sustainability namely green buildings, green energy, green factory, green data centres, green infrastructure, green initiatives, green innovation, green packaging, green portfolio, green power, green practices, green procurement, green products, green program, green rating, green solutions, green space, green team, green tech and green supply chain which are addressed in the published reports of Indian software development businesses. The reports were further analysed to infer some knowledge on how the software development companies could contribute to green environment and the possible environmental impacts of these contributions. Finally a number of generalised conclusions were derived and followed by a set of implications for best practices in green software development as the outcome of the research reported in this paper.

A SWOT framework for analyzing the electricity supply chain using an integrated AHP methodology combined with fuzzy-TOPSIS

ABSTRACT Supply chain refers to the integrated chain of organizations, loops, persons who are involving in stuff generation and costumer servicing. One of these services is the electricity which can be consumed as domestic, industrial, agriculture and etc. It can be considered that the electric power supply chain network has four stages which are electricity generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. In this paper, a framework of Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) is presented to analysis the electricity supply chain in north-west of Iran. In this regard, some interviews are done with several experts of electricity industry. In addition, an integrated AHP method which is combined with fuzzy-TOPSIS is proposed to prioritize the SWOT factors for the proposed electricity supply chain. The results show that the proposed method can be used effectively in order to determine a strategy plan with high prioritizing for planning and decision-making in electricity supply chain.

Joint optimization for coordinated configuration of product families and supply chains by a leader-follower Stackelberg game

Product family design by module configuration is conducive to accommodating product variety while maintaining mass production efficiency. Effective fulfillment of product families necessitates joint decision making of product family configuration (PFC) and downstream supply chain configuration (SCC), due to nowadays manufacturers’ moving towards assembly-to-order production throughout a distributed supply chain network. Existing decision models for joint optimization of product family and supply chain configuration are originated from an “all-in-one” approach that assumes both PFC and SCC decisions can be integrated into one optimization problem by aggregating two different types of objectives into a single objective function. Such an assumption neglects the complex tradeoffs underlying two different decision making problems and fails to reveal the inherent coupling of PFC and SCC.This paper formulates joint configuration of a product family and its supply chain as a leader-follower Stackelberg game that is enacted through a bi-level hierarchical optimization mechanism to model the coordination between two self-interested decision makers for PFC and SCC. The PFC decisions are modeled as an upper-level optimization problem (called leader) for optimal selection of modules, module instances, and product variants. The SCC decisions are modeled as a lower-level optimization problem (called follower), which responds to decisions of the upper level in order to determine an optimal supply chain configuration and inventory policies. A nonlinear, mixed integer programming model is formulated for the bi-level joint decision in the leader-follower game. To solve the nonlinear optimization model, a bi-level, nested genetic algorithm with constraint reasoning is developed and implemented. A case study of a power transformer product family and supply chain configuration is reported to demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed leader-follower game-theoretic method.

A stakeholder analysis of divergent supply-chain trends for the European onshore and offshore wind installations

This paper provides a survey-based analysis of investment decisions and structural shifts related to onshore and offshore wind power supply chains. Insights on cost reductions are obtained from a detailed stakeholder survey conducted amongst the European wind power industry in 2012. Overall, a rather more optimistic view of the scope for cost reductions in offshore technology is presented than has previously been evident in empirical analysis. From the analysis we conclude that the wind power industry has experienced a decoupling process of the offshore supply chain from its onshore counterpart with diverging technological requirements. For policy-makers, it is essential to acknowledge that barriers to adoption and the consequent needs for subsidies among the players in the onshore and offshore supply chains seem to differ, and that a micro-level analysis of the innovations and risks involved at the various stages in the supply chain is necessary.

A method for designing power supply chain networks accounting for failure scenarios and preventive maintenance

A power grid is vulnerable and failures are inevitable. Failures decrease the power supply with an adverse effect on meeting the demand for electricity. Therefore, there is a need for a method to design power grid networks that result in the least possible disruption to the power supply when a failure occurs. In the literature, the focus has been on the design of the generation system without considering the transmission system or failures in the transmission system. Since power grids are integrated generation and transmission systems, each system will affect the other, so both generation and transmission systems need to be considered, as they are in this article. Methods developed for the structural modelling and analysis of supply chains are shown to be useful. The focus in this article is on describing a method using the supply chain construct for designing power grids that are relatively insensitive to failure in the integrated generation and transmission system. The efficacy of the method is illustrated using data from the Tehran Regional Electric Company. One of the findings is that targeted failures have a higher impact on decreasing the performance of the power grid than random failures. However, the focus is on the method rather than the results per se.

Computational Framework for Optimal Carbon Taxes Based on Electric Supply Chain Considering Transmission Constraints and Losses

A modeling and computational framework is presented for the determination of optimal carbon taxes that apply to electric power plants in the context of electric power supply chain with consideration of transmission constraints and losses. In order to achieve this goal, a generalized electric power supply chain network equilibrium model is used. Under deregulation, there are several players in electrical market: generation companies, power suppliers, transmission service providers, and consumers. Each player in this model tries to maximize its own profit and competes with others in a noncooperative manner. The Nash equilibrium conditions of these players in this model form a finite-dimensional variational inequality problem (VIP). By solving this VIP via an extragradient method based on an interior point algorithm, the optimal carbon taxes of power plants can be determined. Numerical examples are provided to analyze the results of the presented modeling.

Wind power supply chain in China

Abstract Wind power industry has experienced swift development and gradually moved towards maturity in China. However some hiding issues have appeared and threatened its sustainable development. In this paper, we employ the supply chain framework to present a thorough and comprehensive review on China׳s wind power industry. First we identify key stakeholders along the supply chain and discuss their concerns. Then we summarize the evolution of related policies in both upstream and downstream of the supply chain. The concerns of stakeholders and the existing policies will help understand the progress and challenges of the industry in China. We find that inability of independent technique innovation, unordered and unbalanced pattern of wind farm development, de-motivation of power grid companies, incompatible technical codes of power grid operation, and neglected demand response are among the key issues. Policy recommendations are proposed to address these problems.