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Full-Text Articles in Power and Energy

Developing Positive Thermal Coefficient (Ptc) Heaters For Solar Electric Cooking, Katarina Ivana Brekalo, Andrew Shepherd Sep 2022

Developing Positive Thermal Coefficient (Ptc) Heaters For Solar Electric Cooking, Katarina Ivana Brekalo, Andrew Shepherd

Physics

Positive Thermal Coefficients, PTCs, are materials that abruptly change in resistance in response to changes in temperature. The purpose of this experiment is to explore the viability of using the switching type ceramic PTC thermistor as a replacement for current resistive heaters. These types of PTCs have a nonlinear change in resistance with increases in temperature. This device will be used as a temperature-controlling heating element intended to power an Insulated Solar Electric Cooker (ISEC). The ISEC is designed to cook meals throughout the day for impacted communities as an alternative cooking method that doesn’t require biofuel as an energy …


Models And Machine Learning Techniques For Improving The Planning And Operation Of Electricity Systems In Developing Regions, Santiago Correa Cardona Jun 2022

Models And Machine Learning Techniques For Improving The Planning And Operation Of Electricity Systems In Developing Regions, Santiago Correa Cardona

Doctoral Dissertations

The enormous innovation in computational intelligence has disrupted the traditional ways we solve the main problems of our society and allowed us to make more data-informed decisions. Energy systems and the ways we deliver electricity are not exceptions to this trend: cheap and pervasive sensing systems and new communication technologies have enabled the collection of large amounts of data that are being used to monitor and predict in real-time the behavior of this infrastructure. Bringing intelligence to the power grid creates many opportunities to integrate new renewable energy sources more efficiently, facilitate grid planning and expansion, improve reliability, optimize electricity …


Improving The Programmability Of Networked Energy Systems, Noman Bashir Jun 2022

Improving The Programmability Of Networked Energy Systems, Noman Bashir

Doctoral Dissertations

Global warming and climate change have underscored the need for designing sustainable energy systems. Sustainable energy systems, e.g., smart grids, green data centers, differ from the traditional systems in significant ways and present unique challenges to system designers and operators. First, intermittent renewable energy resources power these systems, which break the notion of infinite, reliable, and controllable power supply. Second, these systems come in varying sizes, spanning over large geographical regions. The control of these dispersed and diverse systems raises scalability challenges. Third, the performance modeling and fault detection in sustainable energy systems is still an active research area. Finally, …


Deep Learning For Load Forecasting With Smart Meter Data: Online And Federated Learning, Mohammad Navid Fekri Apr 2022

Deep Learning For Load Forecasting With Smart Meter Data: Online And Federated Learning, Mohammad Navid Fekri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Electricity load forecasting has been attracting increasing attention because of its importance for energy management, infrastructure planning, and budgeting. In recent years, the proliferation of smart meters has created new opportunities for forecasting on the building and even individual household levels. Machine learning (ML) has achieved great successes in this domain; however, conventional ML techniques require data transfer to a centralized location for model training, therefore, increasing network traffic and exposing data to privacy and security risks. Also, traditional approaches employ offline learning, which means that they are only trained once and miss out on the possibility to learn from …


Intra-Hour Solar Forecasting Using Cloud Dynamics Features Extracted From Ground-Based Infrared Sky Images, Guillermo Terrén-Serrano Apr 2022

Intra-Hour Solar Forecasting Using Cloud Dynamics Features Extracted From Ground-Based Infrared Sky Images, Guillermo Terrén-Serrano

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Due to the increasing use of photovoltaic systems, power grids are vulnerable to the projection of shadows from moving clouds. An intra-hour solar forecast provides power grids with the capability of automatically controlling the dispatch of energy, reducing the additional cost for a guaranteed, reliable supply of energy (i.e., energy storage). This dissertation introduces a novel sky imager consisting of a long-wave radiometric infrared camera and a visible light camera with a fisheye lens. The imager is mounted on a solar tracker to maintain the Sun in the center of the images throughout the day, reducing the scattering effect produced …


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% …