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Vertical Free-Swinging Photovoltaic Racking Energy Modeling: A Novel Approach To Agrivoltaics, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Joshua M. Pearce Dec 2023

Vertical Free-Swinging Photovoltaic Racking Energy Modeling: A Novel Approach To Agrivoltaics, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

To enable lower-cost building materials, a free-swinging bifacial vertical solar photovoltaic (PV) rack has been proposed, which complies with Canadian building codes and is the lowest capital-cost agrivoltaics rack. The wind force applied to the free-swinging PV, however, causes it to have varying tilt angles depending on the wind speed and direction. No energy performance model accurately describes such a system. To provide a simulation model for the free-swinging PV, where wind speed and direction govern the array tilt angle, this study builds upon the open-source System Advisor Model (SAM) using Python. After the SAM python model is validated, a …


Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering With Dynamic Time Warping For Household Load Curve Clustering, Fadi Almahamid, Katarina Grolinger Oct 2022

Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering With Dynamic Time Warping For Household Load Curve Clustering, Fadi Almahamid, Katarina Grolinger

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Energy companies often implement various demand response (DR) programs to better match electricity demand and supply by offering the consumers incentives to reduce their demand during critical periods. Classifying clients according to their consumption patterns enables targeting specific groups of consumers for DR. Traditional clustering algorithms use standard distance measurement to find the distance between two points. The results produced by clustering algorithms such as K-means, K-medoids, and Gaussian Mixture Models depend on the clustering parameters or initial clusters. In contrast, our methodology uses a shape-based approach that combines Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) with Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to classify …


Monofacial Vs Bifacial Solar Photovoltaic Systems In Snowy Environments, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Aliaksei Petsiuk, Pierce Mayville, Laura Brown, Joshua M. Pearce Jun 2022

Monofacial Vs Bifacial Solar Photovoltaic Systems In Snowy Environments, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Aliaksei Petsiuk, Pierce Mayville, Laura Brown, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

There has been a recent surge in interest in the more accurate snow loss estimates for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems as large-scale deployments move into northern latitudes. Preliminary results show bifacial modules may clear snow faster than monofacial PV. This study analyzes snow losses on these two types of systems using empirical hourly data including energy, solar irradiation and albedo, and open-source image processing methods from images of the arrays in a northern environment in the winter. Projection transformations based on reference anchor points and snowless ground truth images provide reliable masking and optical distortion correction with fixed surveillance cameras. …


Foam-Based Floatovoltaics: A Potential Solution To Disappearing Terminal Natural Lakes, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Joshua M. Pearce Apr 2022

Foam-Based Floatovoltaics: A Potential Solution To Disappearing Terminal Natural Lakes, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Terminal lakes are disappearing worldwide because of direct and indirect human activities. Floating photovoltaics (FPV) are a synergistic system with increased energy output because of water cooling, while the FPV reduces water evaporation. This study explores how low-cost foam-based floatovoltaic systems can mitigate the disappearance of natural lakes. A case study is performed on 10%–50% FPV coverage of terminal and disappearing Walker Lake. Water conservation is investigated with a modified Penman-Monteith evapotranspiration method and energy generation is calculated with an operating temperature model experimentally determined from foam-based FPV. Results show FPV saves 52,000,000 m3/year of water and US$6,000,000 at 50% …


The Greenest Solar Power? Life Cycle Assessment Of Foam-Based Flexible Floatovoltaics, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Pierce Mayville, Joshua M. Pearce Mar 2022

The Greenest Solar Power? Life Cycle Assessment Of Foam-Based Flexible Floatovoltaics, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Pierce Mayville, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

This study presents a life cycle analysis (LCA) of a 10 MW foam-based floatovoltaics (FPV) plant installed on Lake Mead, Nevada, U.S. A material inventory of the flexible crystalline silicon (c-Si)-based module involved massing and determination of material composition of the module's encapsulation layers with ATR/FTR spectroscopy and electron microscopy. The LCA was performed using SimaPro and the results were interpreted in terms of cumulative energy demands, energy payback time, global warming potential, GHG emissions, and water footprint including negative values for reduced evaporation. A sensitivity analysis was performed on the lifetime of the modules and the foam-based racking. The …


Deep Learning For High-Impedance Fault Detection: Convolutional Autoencoders, Khushwant Rai, Firouz Badrkhani Ajaei, Farnam Hojatpanah, Katarina Grolinger Jan 2021

Deep Learning For High-Impedance Fault Detection: Convolutional Autoencoders, Khushwant Rai, Firouz Badrkhani Ajaei, Farnam Hojatpanah, Katarina Grolinger

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

High-impedance faults (HIF) are difficult to detect because of their low current amplitude and highly diverse characteristics. In recent years, machine learning (ML) has been gaining popularity in HIF detection because ML techniques learn patterns from data and successfully detect HIFs. However, as these methods are based on supervised learning, they fail to reliably detect any scenario, fault or non-fault, not present in the training data. Consequently, this paper takes advantage of unsupervised learning and proposes a convolutional autoencoder framework for HIF detection (CAE-HIFD). Contrary to the conventional autoencoders that learn from normal behavior, the convolutional autoencoder (CAE) in CAE-HIFD …


Edge-Cloud Computing For Iot Data Analytics: Embedding Intelligence In The Edge With Deep Learning, Ananda Mohon M. Ghosh, Katarina Grolinger Jan 2020

Edge-Cloud Computing For Iot Data Analytics: Embedding Intelligence In The Edge With Deep Learning, Ananda Mohon M. Ghosh, Katarina Grolinger

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Rapid growth in numbers of connected devices including sensors, mobile, wearable, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, is creating an explosion of data that are moving across the network. To carry out machine learning (ML), IoT data are typically transferred to the cloud or another centralized system for storage and processing; however, this causes latencies and increases network traffic. Edge computing has the potential to remedy those issues by moving computation closer to the network edge and data sources. On the other hand, edge computing is limited in terms of computational power and thus is not well suited for …


Energy Consumption Prediction With Big Data: Balancing Prediction Accuracy And Computational Resources, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald Jun 2016

Energy Consumption Prediction With Big Data: Balancing Prediction Accuracy And Computational Resources, Katarina Grolinger, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

In recent years, advances in sensor technologies and expansion of smart meters have resulted in massive growth of energy data sets. These Big Data have created new opportunities for energy prediction, but at the same time, they impose new challenges for traditional technologies. On the other hand, new approaches for handling and processing these Big Data have emerged, such as MapReduce, Spark, Storm, and Oxdata H2O. This paper explores how findings from machine learning with Big Data can benefit energy consumption prediction. An approach based on local learning with support vector regression (SVR) is presented. Although local learning itself is …


Energy Forecasting For Event Venues: Big Data And Prediction Accuracy, Katarina Grolinger, Alexandra L'Heureux, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald Dec 2015

Energy Forecasting For Event Venues: Big Data And Prediction Accuracy, Katarina Grolinger, Alexandra L'Heureux, Miriam Am Capretz, Luke Seewald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Advances in sensor technologies and the proliferation of smart meters have resulted in an explosion of energy-related data sets. These Big Data have created opportunities for development of new energy services and a promise of better energy management and conservation. Sensor-based energy forecasting has been researched in the context of office buildings, schools, and residential buildings. This paper investigates sensor-based forecasting in the context of event-organizing venues, which present an especially difficult scenario due to large variations in consumption caused by the hosted events. Moreover, the significance of the data set size, specifically the impact of temporal granularity, on energy …