Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Investigation Of Electrical Defects Arising From Excessive Sidewall Force And Excessive Tensile Strain On Power Cables, Darren Mcconnon, Joseph Kearney, Tom Looby, James O'Shaughnessy

Conference papers

The study includes a comprehensive review of the existing literature and guidelines regarding the effects of sidewall force and tensile strain on power cables during installation. The most appropriate diagnostic test methods required to analyse these effects are also assessed. The results of tests and analysis of the existing literature are then combined in an attempt to determine a realistic basis for guidelines and recommendations relevant to cable installation forces.

Adaptive Environments For Enabling Senior Citizens: An Holistic Assessment Tool For Housing Design And Iot-Based Technologies, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry, Niccolò Casiddu

Conference papers

The population of older adults will continuously increase over the coming decades. As they get older, people will require assistance and regular monitoring, with higher costs for welfare system and families. Two vital aspects of a healthy lifestyle, are domestic autonomy and maintenance of relationships within the neighborhood. This leads to an interesting research issue: “Could houses and appliances have the potential to improve autonomy and quality of life of citizens? Which methods and tools could enhance wellbeing and healthy conditions? The house has the potential to be a safe, adaptive environment, integrated with technologies for life support. This work …

Optical Wavelength Ratiometric Monitoring System For Data Centre Cwdm Applications, Anthony Colohan, Thomas Freir, Derek Finlay

Conference papers

The development of the internet and the subsequent increase in the quantity of connected devices in recent years has given rise to an explosion in demand of data traffic across telecommunication networks. Converged networks deliver high speed bit rates for the purpose of streaming videos, downloading music files and communicating over the internet; voice over internet protocol (VOIP). Further additional data traffic growth stemming from the upsurge in the amount of ‘tweets’ and instant messages (IM) created as well as emails written and cloud storage, has led to a demand for the construction of much larger data centres, which …

Bitrate Classification Of Twice-Encoded Audio Using Objective Quality Features, Colm Sloan, Damien Kelly, Naomi Harte, Anil C. Kokaram, Andrew Hines

Conference papers

When a user uploads audio files to a music stream- ing service, these files are subsequently re-encoded to lower bitrates to target different devices, e.g. low bitrate for mobile. To save time and bandwidth uploading files, some users encode their original files using a lossy codec. The metadata for these files cannot always be trusted as users might have encoded their files more than once. Determining the lowest bitrate of the files allows the streaming service to skip the process of encoding the files to bitrates higher than that of the uploaded files, saving on processing and storage space. This …

Using Photovoltaics To Power Electrochemical Chloride Extraction From Concrete, Sean Bond, Lynette O'Callaghan, Niall Holmes Dr., Brian Norton

Conference papers

Corrosion of embedded steel in reinforced concrete (RC) is a world-wide problem, that reduces structural performance and lifespan. Chloride attack may be a result of seawater, de-icing salts or contaminated admixtures, brought on by ingress of chlorides into the concrete. Electrochemical Chloride Extraction (ECE) is a non-destructive treatment for contaminated RC structures, that due to uncertainty of treatment times and applied current densities, is only 50% effective. It is often diesel powered has an environmental impact and often very costly due to the long treatment times. To improve the efficiency of ECE the influences of concrete resistance, cement type and …

Supervision Of Community Based Microgrids: An Economic Model Predictive Control Approach, Francesco Tedesco, Lubna Mariam, Malabika Basu, Alessandro Casavola, Michael F. Conlon

Conference papers

Abstract— In this paper, an Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) approach has been presented to manage a Community-based microgrid (C-µGCC) at the pricing level. The main task is at satisfying the demand at prosumer sides and, at the same time, optimizing various µ-Grid contrasting objectives. Emphasis has been given to the operational constraints related to the components lifetime, whose satisfaction would be beneficial for the grid in that the maintenance and replacement costs would be reduced. A simulative analysis has been carried out on the basis of available measured data related to a location in Dublin, Ireland. Results show the …

Sol-Gel Silica Coated Optical Fiber Sensor For Ammonia Gas Detection, Dejun Liu, Arun Mallik, Wei Han, Qiang Wu

Conference papers

A high sensitivity ammonia gas sensor based on a tapered small core single-mode fiber (SCSMF) structure for measurement of ammonia gas concentration is reported. The proposed tapered SCSMF fiber structure has a waist diameter of 13.5 μm and it is fabricated using a customized microheater brushing technique. The silica based material prepared by sol-gel method is used as a coating applied to the surface of tapered fiber structures. Experimental results show that sensor is very sensitive to ammonia. The best measurement resolution of the ammonia concentration is estimated to be 16 ppb for gas concentrations of 0.5 ppm to 2.5 …

Cultural Change Through Bim: Driving Lean Transformation In Education, Avril Behan, Malachy Mathews, Kevin Furlong, Ciara Ahern, Una Beagon, Peter Brennan, Colin Conway, Lee Corcoran, Pierce Fahy, Alan Hore, Barry Mcauley, Trevor Woods

Conference papers

This paper presents a case study of how the adoption of BIM-based practices in the AECO industry is being reflected by cultural change in higher education in Ireland. The silo-mentality that has dominated the AECO sector for more than a century has, despite numerous reorganisations, been replicated in the structures of educational institutions, including in Dublin Institute of Technology since the inception of its founding colleges in the late 1800s. Most AECO programmes must include content that is external to the programme’s specific discipline. Through the School structures of the Institute, delivery of such content is known as "service teaching" …

Accelerated Aging Test On Multiple Xlpe Mv Cables Simultaneously To Induce Water Trees, Shane Conlan, Jane Courtney, Tom Looby

Conference papers

The objective of this paper is to develop an accelerated ageing test to induce water tree growth which is capable of testing up to ten 10 kV cable samples simultaneously. An existing accelerated ageing method was used as a basis for this project. This method uses a high frequency power supply (3 kHz) to achieve a test duration of 14 days. Modifications were made to this method to allow for multiple samples to be tested simultaneously. A specially designed variable inductor was utilised in a parallel RLC resonance circuit. This resonance circuit limits the current draw from a high frequency …

Wind Energy And Ireland: Could Forecasting Errors Lead To A Flawed Market?, Michael Mcdonald, Thomas Woolmington, Keith Sunderland

Conference papers

This paper explores wind energy forecasting consistency by considering the error benchmarks associated with the generation output of a small wind farm in comparison to the national forecasting as provided by Eirgrid, the Irish TSO. This percentage error analysis will contrast the predicted (Eirgrid) capacity and actual wind energy output observations (Wind farm) and postulations that consider alternative prediction metrics are discussed. The findings suggest that in monthly like for like comparisons over a twelve month period, total MWh percentage errors of -0.36% and 5.7% are observed respectively for the actual generation and the forecasted …

Impacts On The Electrical System Economics From Critical Design Factors Of Wave Energy Converters And Arrays, Fergus Sharkey, Michael Conlon, Kevin Gaughan

Conference papers

It is expected that ultimately, like offshore wind farms, electrical systems will make up to a quarter of the overall Capex of wave farms. This is a significant element of cost and consideration must be taken in the design of both individual wave energy converters (WECs) and arrays of WECs to ensure that these costs can be minimised. In a worst case scenario design decisions could increase the cost of the electrical system by several orders and ultimately make the technology uncompetitive.

This paper outlines the impacts on the cost of the electrical system arising from design factors of WECs …

Control Of The Shunt Active Power Filter Under Non-Ideal Grid Voltage And Unbalanced Load Conditions, Samet Biricik, Soydan Redif, Ozgur Ozerdem, Malabika Basu

Conference papers

In this study a new method is proposed in order to improve the harmonic suppression efficiency of Active Power Filter for the problems caused by the distorted and unbalanced voltages with unbalanced load currents in control strategy. The proposed control method gives an adequate compensating current reference even for non ideal voltage and unbalanced current conditions. The results of simulation study are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control technique in this study.

A Study On The Power Quality Of Dg Integrated Building Energy System In Virtual Environment, Shafiuzzaman K. Khadem, Ruth Kerrigan, Malabika Basu, Biswajit Basu

Conference papers

In this paper, the electrical energy demand of a typical residential building has been extracted from a Virtual Environment (VE) simulation. The extracted energy demand is generated by input load demand and hourly operating information. Based on the electrical energy demand for a typical day, a building integrated photovoltaic (PV) system is then simulated in MATLAB to extract the current/voltage disturbance information into the network. Outcome of this simulation shows the voltage/current waveform along with the disturbances at different locations in the building. The city of Dublin, Ireland has been chosen as a geographical location and VE-Pro software has been …

Community Microgrid Based On Micro-Wind Generation System, Lubna Mariam, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

Penetration of renewable energy sources (such as solar/wind) are being explored mostly as micro power generation (μGen) or mega power plant system. In recent years, emphasis has been given on Microgrid (μGrid) systems because of their few advantages over μGen systems in terms of power quality, stability, reliability, economics etc. But the commercial installation of the μGrid system is not yet progressing significantly. This paper presents the techno-economic aspects of μGen and μGrid systems towards the development of grid connected community based μGrid (C-μGrid) system. Emphasis has been given to identify the benefits of the μGrid over the μGen system. …

A New Placement And Integration Method Of Upqc To Improve The Power Quality In Dg Network, Shafiuzzaman K. Khadem, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

A new proposal for the placement and integration of UPQC in DG connected microgrid/micro generation (μG) system has been presented here. DG converters (with storage), the load and shunt part of the UPQC will be placed at or after the PCC. The series part of the UPQC will be placed before the PCC and in series with the grid. DC link can be connected to the storage system also. Hence, it is termed UPQCμ_G. The advantages of the proposed UPQCμ_G over the normal UPQC are to compensate voltage interruptions in addition to voltage sags / swells, harmonic …

Reduction Of Circulating Current Flow In Parallel Operation Of Apf Based On Hysteresis Current Control, Shafiuzzaman K. Khadem, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

Capacity enhancement and operation flexibility are two of the important limitations of the centralized Shunt Active Power Filter (APF_sh) unit. This can be overcome by multiple and parallel APF_sh units (in distributed mode) with a common DC link. In that case, a circulating current (CC) can flow. In the case of a hysteresis current controller based multiple APF_sh units in load sharing mode, this CC control is not yet achieved. One of the difficulties of this CC flow control or reduction is the variable switching frequency of the APF_sh units. In this paper, the model …

Analysis Of Compensation Techniques Applied To The Control Of Converter Connected Synchronous Wind Turbines And Dfig’S During Grid Disturbances., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

This paper investigates control schemes to improve the performance of converter connected synchronous generators and DFIG’s to grid voltage unbalance and grid faults. Both the synchronous generator with a full converter and a DFIG are modelled in Matlab/Simulink. The control schemes of both turbines are modified to improve their performance during grid disturbances including grid voltage unbalance and single-phase faults. These disturbances are introduced into the models at specific times to analyse the performance of the wind generation systems. The performances of both systems to the grid disturbances are compared and the results are analysed.

Diagnosis Of Breast Cancer By Optical Image Analysis, Salim J. Attia, Jonathan Blackledge, Ziad M. Abood, I. R. Agool

Conference papers

We consider the process of object detection, recognition and classification in digital optical images of human breast cells with the aim of differentiating between normal and abnormal (cancerous) cells. The work is based on research into the development of a breast cancer screening system that can be used by cytologists to differentiate between benign and malignant types using images that are typical of those currently interpreted by cytologists world-wide. The approach considered is based on feature vectors which are of two types. We consider statistical features such as the mode, median, mean, and standard deviation and features composed of Euclidian …

Surveying First-Year Students Prior Conceptual Understanding Of Direct Current Resistive Electric Circuits: An Update, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

There is an increasing diversity of educational background of students entering Level 7 and Level 8 programmes in engineering in Irish third level education. Student reasoning about basic electricity concepts often differs from accepted explanations. The paper reports, analyses and reflects on the results of a multiple-choice diagnostic test to assess student understanding of such concepts (developed by Engelhardt and Beichner (2004) for U.S. high school and college students) taken by four cohorts of students, on the same DIT Level 7 engineering programme, from 2008-12 (n=106) and two cohorts of students, on the same DIT Level 8 engineering programme, from …

Shifted Nmf With Group Sparsity For Clustering Nmf Basis Functions, Rajesh Jaiswal, Derry Fitzgerald, Eugene Coyle, Scott Rickard

Conference papers

Recently, Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF) has found application in separation of individual sound sources. NMF decomposes the spectrogram of an audio mixture into an additive parts based representation where the parts typically correspond to individual notes or chords. However, there is a need to cluster the NMF basis functions to their sources. Although, many attempts have been made to improve the clustering of the basis functions to sources, much research is still required in this area. Recently, Shifted Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (SNMF) was used to cluster these basis functions. To this end, we propose that the incorporation of group sparsity …

Analysis Of Converter Connected Synchronous Wind Turbines To Grid Disturbances., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

This paper investigates the performance of synchronous generators to grid voltage unbalance and grid faults. A Model of a synchronous generator with a full converter is implemented in the SimPowerSystems toolbox in Matlab/Simulink. Methods to modify the converter control schemes to improve the synchronous generator systems response to grid voltage unbalance and grid faults are investigated. Grid faults including grid voltage unbalance, and line-to-ground faults are introduced into the model at specific times to analyse the performance of the wind generation system. Improvements in the performance of the synchronous generator WECS to the grid disturbances are illustrated.

A Review Of Parallel Operation Of Active Power Filters In The Distributed Generation System, Shafiuzzaman Khan Khadem, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

In this paper a technical review of parallel operation of Active Power Filter (APF) for harmonic power compensation in distributed generation (DG) network has been presented. Controlling methods and connection topologies with their pros and cons are described. Recent improvements in controlling and future trends for the application of APFs in distributed mode are also identified.

Observations Of The Wind Resource Across The Dublin Urban Area, Keith Sunderland, Michael Conlon, Gerald Mills, Rowan Feely

Conference papers

This paper presents an investigation of wind observations made at three (of a network of ten) stations in Dublin. Two of the stations are located over different parts of the urbanized landscape and one is located at Dublin Airport, which exemplifies a typical meteorological station. The purpose of the analysis is to evaluate the nature of the wind resource in the urban area. The potential output of a range of commercially available micro wind turbines at one of the stations is considered. At this location, an anemometer is mounted in a similar manner to international examples of building mounted domestic …

Does A Link Exist Between Examination Performance And Lecture Attendance For First Year Engineering Students ?, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

The objective of this study is to examine if a link exists between lecture attendance and examination performance of Level 7, Year 1, Electrical Engineering students at Dublin Institute of Technology in the Electrical Systems subject. Lecture attendance was monitored and analysed over four academic years (2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-11). The average lecture attendance for students in the three academic years from 2007-10 was 55%, increasing noticeably in the 2009-10 academic year. A statistically significant weakly positive correlation between lecture attendance and examination performance was established. Each 10% increase in student attendance at lectures improved both Module 1 examination …

Clustering Nmf Basis Functions Using Shifted Nmf For Monaural Sound Source Separation, Rajesh Jaiswal, Derry Fitzgerald, Dan Barry, Eugene Coyle, Scott Rickard

Conference papers

Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) has found use in single
channel separation of audio signals, as it gives a parts-based decom-
position of audio spectrograms where the parts typically correspond
to individual notes or chords. However, a notable shortcoming of
NMF is the need to cluster the basis functions to their sources af-
ter decomposition. Despite recent improvements in algorithms for
clustering the basis functions to sources, much work still remains to
further improve these algorithms. To this end we present a novel
clustering algorithm which overcomes some of the limitations of
previous clustering methods. This involves the use of Shifted …

The Application Of Multi Frequency Resonant Controllers In In A Dfig To Improve Performance By Reducing Unwanted Power And Torque Pulsations And Reducing Current Harmonics., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

The paper describes a method to control the rotor-side and grid side converters in a DFIG when subjected to the effects of network voltage unbalance conditions. Multi Frequency Resonant Controllers are incorporated into the grid side and rotor side converters to assist in the control functions. The Resonant Controllers are tuned to twice the network frequency to assist in the control of power and torque pulsations and to three times the network frequency to assist in the control of the generated third harmonic currents. A DFIG model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink and simulations show the reduction in power and torque …

The Application Of Multi Frequency Resonant Controllers In In A Dfig To Improve Performance By Reducing Unwanted Power And Torque Pulsations And Reducing Current Harmonics., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

The paper describes a method to control the rotor-side and grid side converters in a DFIG when subjected to the effects of network voltage unbalance conditions. Multi Frequency Resonant Controllers are incorporated into the grid side and rotor side converters to assist in the control functions. The Resonant Controllers are tuned to twice the network frequency to assist in the control of power and torque pulsations and to three times the network frequency to assist in the control of the generated third harmonic currents. A DFIG model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink and simulations show the reduction in power and torque …

Wavelet Based Islanding Detection Of Dc-Ac Inverter Interfaced Dg Systems, Mohamed Moin Hanif, Malabika Basu, Kevin Gaughan

Conference papers

The increased penetration of distributed generation (DG) often connected to grid through dc-ac interface has made islanding detection an important and challenging issue to power engineers. Several methods based on passive and active detection scheme have been proposed in the literature. While passive schemes have a large non detection zone (NDZ), concern has been raised on active method due to its degrading power quality effect. This paper proposes a wavelet based passive islanding detection scheme with almost zero NDZ for dc-ac inverter interfaced grid connected DGs. The key idea is to utilize the spectral changes in the higher frequency components …

Power Quality In Grid Connected Renewable Energy Systems: Role Of Custom Power Devices, Shafiuzzaman Khan Khadem, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

This paper deals with the technical review of power quality problems associated with the renewable based distributed generation systems and how the custom power devices like STATCOM, DVR and UPQC play important role in power quality improvement. IEEE and IEC standard for the grid connected renewable energy systems are one of the critical point of interest for the selection of custom power devices. Special attention has been given on the compensation of reactive power, harmonic current and voltage fluctuation during the interconnected as well as islanding mode of operation. As the solar and wind are the most abundant resources therefore …

The Control Of Rotor Side And Grid Side Converters In A Dfig During Network Voltage Unbalance Conditions Using Resonant Current Controllers., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

This paper implements control techniques to enable improved operation of DFIG’s when subjected to the effects of network voltage unbalance conditions. The control scheme involves the integration of a resonant regulator into the PI controllers of both the rotor side and grid side converters in a DFIG. The resonant controller is tuned to twice the network frequency (2ω_e) and designed to mitigate against the oscillations in a DFIG due to network voltage unbalance conditions. The grid side converter controller also incorporates a second resonant controller tuned to three times the grid frequency (3ω_e) to alleviate the …