Techno-economic Parameters Research Articles

Optimal Sizing and Location of Co-Digestion Power Plants in Spain through a GIS-Based Approach

The promotion of the development of co-digestion power plants will be intensified in many European Union member states as the main target of the Union concerning energy generation is complete decarbonisation by 2050. This potential expansion prompts the need for optimal resources allocation according to several techno-economical parameters, highlighting energy costs, power infrastructures access, and social and environmental aspects and restrictions. In Spain, agricultural and livestock biogas production trough co-digestion power plants is still poorly deployed, although the EU Directive 2009/28/EU stipulates that energy from bio-fuels and bio-liquids should contribute to a reduction of at least 35% of greenhouse gas emissions in order to be taken into account, and many authors agree that biogas produced from energy crops and livestock waste fulfils this criterion. Moreover, biogas can be used to upgrade gas pipelines and may have other efficient thermal uses. In this paper, through a Geographical Information System approach, eight different co-digestion mixtures have been evaluated and the most profitable ones have been optimized for the Spanish Iberian Peninsula according to the geographical distribution of the resources. Furthermore, the best locations for co-digestion power plants siting have been calculated, minimizing transport costs and considering technical, environmental and social restrictions. In contrast with other studies, this proposed approach is focused on a holistic optimization. Results show that in Spain the most feasible co-digestion mixtures are based on slurry, glycerine and animal meals, and four areas arise with an outstanding energetic potential up to 208 MW exploitable in large electrical power plants, while 347 MW can be reserved for distributed generation based on this technology.

Long-term electricity demand forecast and supply side scenarios for Pakistan (2015–2050): A LEAP model application for policy analysis

Pakistan is facing electricity crises owing to lack of integrated energy planning, reliance on imported fuels for power generation, and poor governance. This situation has challenged governments for over a decade to address these crises. However, despite various conformist planning and policy initiatives, the balance between demand and supply of electricity is yet to be achieved. In this study, Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP) is used to develop Pakistan's LEAP modeling framework for the period 2015–2050. Following demand forecast, four supply side scenarios; Reference (REF), Renewable Energy Technologies (RET), Clean Coal Maximum (CCM) and Energy Efficiency and Conservation (EEC) are enacted considering resource potential, techno-economic parameters, and CO2 emissions. The model results estimate the demand forecast of 1706.3 TWh in 2050, at an annual average growth rate of 8.35%, which is 19 times higher than the base year demand. On the supply side, RET scenario, although capital-intensive earlier in the modeling period, is found to be the sustainable electricity generation path followed by EEC scenario with the lower demand of 1373.2 TWh and minimum Net Present Value (NPV) at an aggregate discount rate of 6%. Conclusion section of the paper provides the recommendations devised from this study results.

At the German coalface: Interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropology and journalism

For an understanding of thecurrent ‘coal conundrum’ and the German Energiewende, we applied a collaborative research method involving, anthropological and journalistic practices in villages in East Germany, where the expansion of open-cut lignite mines is contested. We conducted an in-depth study of the local socio-political effects of changing energy production forms at the coalface of prevailing and transforming energy production sites, with human life-worlds as a focal point. Working interdisciplinary with methods of radio journalism and social anthropology helped to provide insights into how national agendas based on political will, techno-economical parameters, social life-worlds and the factor of time intersect.Despite commonalities between journalism and anthropology, this approach to energy research posed methodological challenges. Our work lead to questions of how to collect and make sense of scientifically sustainable information that would allow us to understand the impact of the Energiewende. It resulted in reflections of the limits of building trust, eliciting quotable statements, dealing with scripted narratives, our own roles as interlocutors, the limits of interdisciplinary work and the impact of these factors on interpreting information in larger contexts of global climate debates and energy policies.

Can Merchant Demand Response Affect Investments in Merchant Energy Storage?

Demand response (DR) and energy storage (ES) technologies are seen as almost perfect substitutes for providing spatiotemporal energy arbitrage in power systems with high penetrations of renewable generation. Using both technologies simultaneously is favorable from the system perspective, but may cause profit scarcity for merchant DR aggregators and ES investors. This paper presents an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints (EPEC) that models interactions between the merchant DR aggregator and the merchant ES investor in a competitive electricity market. The proposed EPEC is solved using the diagonalization method on an ISO New England testbed with a prospective renewable generation portfolio and different techno-economic parameters of prospective DR and ES technologies. The case study reveals that the optimal ES investments are sensitive to the availability of DR resources, as well as to the ES capital cost and cycling efficiency.

The impact of global warming and building renovation measures on district heating system techno-economic parameters

Due to changing weather conditions caused by the global warming and building renovation measures triggered by new building energy efficiency policies, building heat demand in the future is likely to decrease. This effect could consequently impact the techno-economic parameters, feasibility and environmental performance of district heating (DH) systems.The main goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of global warming and building renovation on operational (heat generation) and economic parameters of district heating systems. As a case study, a prototypical district was created based on the district of St. Félix, which is located in Nantes (France). Weather and building renovation scenarios were developed for the 2010–2050 period, with a ten-year time step. Heat demand for all scenarios was calculated with a model based on thermo-electrical analogy, previously developed and validated by the authors, while the network techno-economic parameters were calculated using a tool developed by Veolia Research and Innovation for the internal corporate use.The results indicated that the decrease of heat demand proved to be the highest after the first year of renovation (2020), decreasing by 52% of the reference value (2010). Accordingly, DH linear heat density decreases bellow the profitability minimum for traditional district heating networks. The participation of natural gas peak boiler in heat production increases over the studied period, while the participation of base load biomass boiler decreases, due to the fact that the number of hours with heat demand bellow the technical limit of the base load boiler was increasing. Consequently, CO2 emission levels increased. Heat production costs increased, with higher increase rate for the scenario where the new district heating network is planned, compared to the scenario with an existing network.

Multicriteria analysis of product operational effectiveness at design stages

The multicriteria rapid assessment method of techno-economic parameters of new products is developed. It avoids expensive engineering changes during the operational stages through the analysis of external and internal factors at an early stage in the design that affect the maintainability and manufacturability of the product. The expert selection of the initial multitude of indicators from the five enlarged criteria groups and their subsequent pairwise comparison allow one to distinguish the complex compliance criteria of product design with the average and optimum values of the operational effectiveness. The values comparison provides an opportunity to decide on the continuation of the process for designing and preparation of the product manufacture.

Techno-economic analysis in a superstructure of a multiple floors building (three, five, seven and nine floors) in reinforced concrete and ribbed slabs with rectangular form and different compressive strength values

Adapting “f ck values between 25 MPa to 40 MPa, in three, five, seven and nine floor buildings for places under winds of up to 30 m/s, this research calculated the cost and inputs of these variations. The results have as a goal to improve multiple floors building design in reinforced concrete and ribbed slabs, and to contribute to economic gains. The results were analysed in five stages. (I) Architectural design definition in a 1:1 proportion, (II) structural conception, (III) structural design, (IV) cost composition and (V) techno economic parameters. To sum up, the results showed that lower “f ck ” has presented more viability to few flooring. In addition, with the increase of floors also the “f ck ” raised, causing higher cost around 16,54% in the beams and 11,16% in the slabs. Moreover, the pillars showed a saving of 28,89% in the cost, ranging by up to 11,93% in the average thickness and 6,29% in the concrete form expenditure per m³. Therefore, the research showed an economic achievement of 5,14% in the overall cost between the number of floor.

On Optimal Infrastructure Sharing Strategies in Mobile Radio Networks

The rapid evolution of mobile radio network technologies poses severe technical and economical challenges to mobile network operators (MNOs); on the economical side, the continuous roll-out of technology updates is highly expensive, which may lead to the extreme, where offering advanced mobile services becomes no longer affordable for MNOs which thus, are not incentivized to innovate. Mobile infrastructure sharing among MNOs becomes then an important building block to lower the required per-MNO investment cost involved in the technology roll-out and management phases. We focus on a radio access network (RAN) sharing situation where multiple MNOs with a consolidated network infrastructure coexist in a given set of geographical areas; the MNOs have then to decide if it is profitable to upgrade their RAN technology by deploying additional small-cell base stations and whether to share the investment (and the deployed infrastructure) of the new small-cells with other operators. We address such strategic problems by giving a mathematical framework for the RAN infrastructure sharing problem which returns the “best” infrastructure sharing strategies for operators (coalitions and network configuration) when varying techno-economic parameters such as the achievable throughput in different sharing configurations and the pricing models for the service offered to the users. The proposed formulation is then leveraged to analyze the impact of the aforementioned parameters/input in a realistic mobile network environment based on LTE technology.

Suburban Housing Development and Off-Grid Electric Power Supply Assessment for North-Central Nigeria

Energy infrastructures in North-Central Nigeria are inadequate and grid electricity is unable to meet suburban housing electricity demand. The alternative power-supply options proposed by government for the region require appropriation analysis for selection. Four public housing estates in suburban Abuja are selected for electricity demand analysis under conventional and energy-efficient lighting scenarios; then techno-economic parameters of two off-grid electric power supply systems (PV and Diesel-powered generation) to meet these electricity demands are evaluated. An energy techno-economic assessment methodology is used. The study determines the energy-efficient lighting system is appropriate with 40% energy savings relative to the Conventional Lighting Systems. The diesel generator alternative power-supply option has Life Cycle Costs almost 4 times those of the PV option. The study established the PV-energy-efficient lighting system as the most feasible off-grid electric power supply alternative for implementation.

Techno-economic optimization for the design of solar chimney power plants

This paper aims to propose a methodology for optimization of solar chimney power plants taking into account the techno-economic parameters. The indicator used for optimization is the comparison between the actual achieved simple payback period for the design and the minimum possible (optimum) simple payback period as a reference. An optimization model was executed for different twelve designs in the range 5–200MW to cover reinforced concrete chimney, sloped collector, and floating chimney. The height of the chimney was optimized and the associated collector area was calculated accordingly. Relationships between payback periods, electricity price, and the peak power capacity of each power plant were developed. The resulted payback periods for the floating chimney power plants were the shortest compared to the other studied designs. For a solar chimney power plant with 100MW at electricity price 0.10USD/kWh, the simple payback period for the reference case was 4.29years for floating chimney design compared to 23.47 and 16.88years for reinforced concrete chimney and sloped collector design, respectively. After design optimization for 100MW power plant of each of reinforced concrete, sloped collector, and floating chimney, a save of 19.63, 2.22, and 2.24million USD, respectively from the initial cost of the reference case is achieved. Sensitivity analysis was conducted in this study to evaluate the impacts of varied running cost, solar radiation, and electricity price on the payback periods of solar chimney power plant. Floating chimney design is still performing after applying the highest ratio of annual running cost to the annual revenue. The sensitivity analysis showed that at the same solar radiation and electricity price, the simple payback period for 200MW with sloped collector design would almost have the double simple payback period for 5MW with floating chimney design.

A techno-economic assessment of bitumen and synthetic crude oil transport (SCO) in the Canadian oil sands industry: Oil via rail or pipeline?

The growth in bitumen and synthetic crude oil (SCO) production in the Canadian oil sands industry has superseded pipeline capacity growth in recent years, leading to the increased interest in the transport of crude oil by rail to desired markets. However, the specific techno-economic parameters that facilitate increased competitiveness of either transportation mode against the other is seldom addressed in the existing literature. This paper involves the development of a rail and pipeline techno-economic transport model, which is used to ascertain the transportation cost of both options for a market distance range of 1–3000 km and a production scale of 100,000–750,000 barrels per day (bpd). The transportation cost for either option is highly sensitive to the market distance, transportation scale and crude grade being transported; however, pipelines are generally more competitive for large transportation scales, while the cost-effectiveness of rail transport is realized particularly at smaller transportation scales. In general, pipelines are cost efficient for the transportation of crude oil in the majority of scenarios investigated. Rail can be more economical than pipeline under certain conditions. The use of insulated rail cars for the transport of raw bitumen is the area with greatest potential for cost competitiveness against pipelines.

Concise Approach for Determining the Optimal Annual Capacity Shortage Percentage using Techno-Economic Feasibility Parameters of PV Power System

PV power systems have been commercially available and widely used for decades. The performance of a reliable PV system that fulfils the expectations requires correct input data and careful design. Inaccurate input data of the techno-economic feasibility would affect the size, cost aspects, stability and performance of PV power system on the long run. The annual capacity shortage is one of the main input data that should be selected with careful attention. The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of different annual capacity shortages on the techno-economic feasibility parameters and determining the optimal value for Baghdad city location using HOMER simulation tool. Six values of annual capacity shortage percentages (0%, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, and 5%), and wide daily load profile range (10 kWh - 100 kWh) are implemented. The optimal annual capacity shortage is the value that always “wins” when each techno-economic feasibility parameter is at its optimal/ reasonable criteria. The results showed that the optimal annual capacity shortage that reduces significantly the cost of PV power system while keeping the PV system with reasonable technical feasibility is 3%. This capacity shortage value can be carried as a reference value in future works for Baghdad city location. Using this approach of analysis at other locations, annual capacity shortage can be always offered as a reference value for those locations.

How does El Niño Southern Oscillation impact the wind resource in Chile? A techno-economical assessment of the influence of El Niño and La Niña on the wind power

This paper assesses the impact of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the wind speed, energy production, as well as its impact on the value of potential wind projects at different sites across Chile. The study applies cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function (CSEOF) analysis to isolate the ENSO influence on the wind speed, and therefore on the energy output of nearly all current and potential wind farms in Chile. Finally, a review of techno-economical parameters is made to assess the economic impact of an ENSO event occurring at different years in the lifetime of a wind energy project. The main contribution of this work is to establish the locations in Chile where this climatic oscillation is important for the system planning, the energy forecasting and the risk assessment.

Techno-economic feasibility of hybrid diesel/PV/wind/battery electricity generation systems for non-residential large electricity consumers under southern Iran climate conditions

This paper aims to study the techno-economical parameters of a hybrid diesel/PV/wind/battery power generation system for a non-residential large electricity consumer in the south of Iran. As a case study, the feasibility of running a hybrid system to meet a non-residential community’s load demand of 9911kWh daily average and 725kW peak load demand was investigated. HOMER Pro software was used to model the operation of the system and to identify the appropriate configuration of it based on comparative technical, economical, and environmental analysis. Both stand alone and grid connected systems were modeled. The impacts of annual load growth and governmental energy policies such as providing low interest loan to renewable energy projects, carbon tax, and modifying the grid electricity price on viability of the system were discussed. Results show that for off-grid systems the cost of electricity (COE) and the renewable fraction of 9.3–12.6₵/kWh and 0–43.9%, respectively, are achieved with photovoltaic (PV) panel, wind turbine, and battery sizes of 0–1000kW, 0–600kW, and 1300kWh, respectively. For on grid systems without battery storage the range of COE and renewable fraction are 5.7–8.4₵/kWh and 0–53%, respectively, for the same sizes of PV panel and wind turbine.

Techno-economic performance evaluation of building cooling systems: A study of snow storage and conventional chiller systems

The residential building sector in Canada consumes 17% of the total energy and contributes to 15% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Predominantly, the energy demand for cooling in the residential sector is increasing due to large occupancy floor area and high usage of air-conditioning. Minimizing energy use and associated emissions is one of the highest priority goals set for national energy management strategies in developed countries, including Canada. In this research, a probabilistic feasibility evaluation framework is developed to: i) evaluate the techno-economic performance of different snow storage systems, namely conventional snow storage, watertight snow storage, high-density snow storage, and ii) compare the performance of snow storage systems with the conventional chiller system. The technical and economic performances of all the building cooling system alternatives are evaluated in terms of the coefficient of performance and the total cooling cost per kilowatt-hour at the facility, respectively. Monte-Carlo simulations were performed to address the uncertainties involved in the techno-economic parameters. The framework has also been implemented on a low-rise residential building in Kelowna (British Columbia, Canada) to appraise its practicality. The study results verified that overall snow storage systems are more energy efficient and cost effective options for building cooling systems. This research will support decision-makers in future for selecting sustainable options for building cooling systems.

Technoeconomic parametric analysis of PV-battery systems

Application of integrated PV-battery systems for off-grid locations has a history exceeding four decades. With the observed fast reduction of PV and battery system prices in recent years, however, interest in the use of PV-battery systems has notably increased even at on-grid locations. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of various technoeconomic parameters, such as geographic location, weather condition, electricity price, feed-in tariff, PV/battery system cost, and PV/battery specifications on the economic feasibility of grid-connected PV-battery systems. For this, we have used our inhouse decision support tool for investment decision making, optimal sizing, and operation scheduling of grid-connected PV/battery system with respect to these parameters. The results show that decision on the selection of the right PV-battery system is significantly sensitive to each and every one of these parameters. Within various price scenarios that we carried out, battery shows positive impact on NPV only at low installation costs (e.g. ≤750 $/kWh). Neither the sales electricity tariff nor the feed-in tariff has alone a direct impact on the feasibility of installing a battery system. Rather, the magnitude of the difference between electricity price and feed-in tariff is the detrimental element in battery attractiveness. A case-study for Sydney, Australia, showed that at current sales/feed-in electricity tariffs, PV systems with prices of 2700 $/kW, or less, not only reach parity with the grid electricity price but also reach parity with feed-in tariff. This implies the viability of installing large PV systems merely for selling the generated electricity to the grid.

The feasible onshore wind energy potential in Baden-Württemberg: A bottom-up methodology considering socio-economic constraints

Detailed information about the potential and costs of renewable energies is an important input for energy system models as well as for commercial and political decision-making processes. Especially wind energy with its increasing locally installed capacity and hub heights plays an important role when it comes to meeting climate targets and optimizing electricity networks. Recently however, wind energy has faced more and more social barriers and land use constraints which can negatively impact both political goals and investment decisions. Therefore this work presents a bottom-up methodology to estimate these effects by calculating the feasible potential and the associated costs for the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg as a case study. Landscape aesthetical aspects are considered and an algorithm applied based on graph-theoretical considerations to include spatial planning rules such as separation distances between wind farms. By means of spatially high-resolution land use data and techno-economic parameters, possible wind turbines are placed considering wind direction and variable spacing between turbines. In a further step, possible farm sites are located and assessed, and the result is presented in the form of cost-potential curves. The feasible potential is found to be between a third and a half of the technical potential and is between 11.8 and 29.1 TWh, with costs between 6.7 and 12.6 €ct/kWh. In addition, a substantial spatial shift in the location of future wind energy production can be observed when wind farm spacing is taken into account. The quality of the algorithm is tested against already existing wind farms and areas that are approved by regional authorities for the use of wind energy, and a very good correlation is observed. The focus in future work should lie on the development of an economic criterion that, unlike the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), is able to account for the system costs of a widespread wind energy development, including network expansion, balancing power and reserve energy costs. Further, visibility analysis could be implemented using digital elevation models to consider the topography for optimal wind farm spacing.

Excavation between the levels H-910 and H-830 in the 'Svinja reka' Mine District of the 'Sasa' mine - Makedonska Kamenica

In this paper, the principles of mining between the levels H-910 and H-830 in the 'Svinja reka ' Mining District of the ' Sasa ' lead and zinc mine located in the M. Kamenica, are presented. Excavation has to be realized by implementation the sublevel caving mining method, while temporarily leaving the safety pillars, which have to be blasted in the second phase of excavation. The paper presents development works, as well as works for the ore blasting, based on the designed mining method. Also, the techno-economic parameters of mining method and work organization are presented.

Improved models for technology choice in a transit corridor with fixed demand

We present three extensions to a base optimization model for a transit line which can be used to strategically evaluate technology choices. We add to the base model optimal stop spacing and train length, a crowding penalty, and a multi-period generalization. These extensions are analytically solvable by simple approximations and lead to meaningful insights. Their significance is illustrated by means of an example in which two road modes and two rail modes are defined by a set of techno-economical parameters. These parameters loaded in the base model yield dominance of road modes for all but the largest demand levels. We consistently keep this set of parameters for all models, and show how the break-even points between road and rail modes progressively recede toward lower demand levels when model refinements – not parameter changes – are applied. Scenario analyses of plausible parameter sets highlight the model’s versatility, and caution on general conclusions regarding technology dominance.

Reliability and Rationing Cost: Some Analytical Implications for a Power System

The present paper attempts to analyze the implications of the relationship between reliability and rationing cost involved in a power supply system in the framework of the standard inventory analysis, instead of the conventional marginalist approach of welfare economics. The study is substantiated by fitting a normal distribution to the daily internal maximum demand of the Kerala power system during the four-year period from 2010-11 to 2013-14, and also by estimating, based on the techno-economic parameters of a 660 MW thermal power plant, the rationing costs implied in different reliability target criteria.