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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Sundown: Model-Driven Per-Panel Solar Anomaly Detection For Residential Arrays, Menghong Feng
Sundown: Model-Driven Per-Panel Solar Anomaly Detection For Residential Arrays, Menghong Feng
Masters Theses
There has been significant growth in both utility-scale and residential-scale solar installa- tions in recent years, driven by rapid technology improvements and falling prices. Unlike utility-scale solar farms that are professionally managed and maintained, smaller residential- scale installations often lack sensing and instrumentation for performance monitoring and fault detection. As a result, faults may go undetected for long periods of time, resulting in generation and revenue losses for the homeowner. In this thesis, we present SunDown, a sensorless approach designed to detect per-panel faults in residential solar arrays. SunDown does not require any new sensors for its fault detection and …
Operational Planning In Combined Heat And Power Systems, Hariharan Gopalakrishnan
Operational Planning In Combined Heat And Power Systems, Hariharan Gopalakrishnan
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation presents methodologies for operational planning in Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems. The subject of experimentation is the University of Massachusetts CHP system, which is a 22 MWe/640 MBh system for a district energy application. Systems like this have complex energy flow networks due to multiple interconnected thermodynamic components like gas and steam turbines, boilers and heat recovery steam generators and also interconnection with centralized electric grids. In district energy applications, heat and power requirements vary over 24 hour periods (planning horizon) due to changing weather conditions, time-of-day factors and consumer requirements. System thermal performance is highly dependent …