Rural electrification for isolated consumers: Sustainable management model based on residue biomass

This paper presents a case study of the electrification of a riparian community in the State of Pará, Brazil, within the scope of the Program for Electric Power Service Universalization in Brazil. The community is located in a remote area; approximately 100 km from the municipal district, there is no regular transport to access the community, and adequate communication service. The community is provided with electrification facilities through a small biomass-based power plant, directly firing residues produced by the local economic activity. The objective of the paper is to propose a sustainable management model that is suitable for community's isolation conditions, considering the high costs with operation and maintenance related to the supply of isolated consumers in small locations. A simulation is conducted for the operation of the small biomass-based power plant, the generation costs are determined, the legal aspects are analyzed, and a suggestion for the management model is presented.     

Public perceptions of opportunities for community-based renewable energy projects

It now widely acknowledged that the UK needs to increase renewable energy capacity and it has been claimed that community-based renewable energy projects, with high levels of public participation, are more likely to be accepted by the public than top-down development of large-scale schemes and may bring additional benefits such as increased engagement with sustainable energy issues. However, little research has investigated public expectations of how people would like to participate in such projects and why. The aim of this study was to explore one rural community's response to a proposed sustainable energy project. A questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews provided quantitative and qualitative data. There was widespread support for local generation and use of renewable energy, with respondents expecting benefits from a project in terms of increased community spirit and conservation of natural resources. However, desire for active involvement was lower and residents viewed themselves participating as consultees, rather than project leaders. We suggest community renewable energy projects are likely to gain public acceptance but are unlikely to become widespread without greater institutional support.     

Uncovering opportunity of low-carbon city promotion with industrial system innovation: Case study on industrial symbiosis projects in China

There is a dilemma for rapid industrializing China to balance economic growth and low carbonization. Industrial symbiosis (IS) provides a system innovation to utilize the industry to fight climate change and pursue sustainable urban development, while few attentions are paid in literatures. Under this circumstance, this study reviews the low-carbon city practice in China and conducts a case study to calculate the CO₂ emissions reduction potential under promoting IS projects in two cities of China, named Jinan and Liuzhou. With the real national project in Jinan as advanced example, new scenarios related to IS are designed for Liuzhou, including comprehensive energy network, waste plastics recycling, scrap tires recycling and flying ash recycling. The material/waste and energy exchange is quantified in the IS network, as well as the related environmental benefit. The material/energy exchange is over 10 million ton and 20 thousands tce in Jinan's case, and 2.5 million ton and 45 thousand tce in Liuzhou's case. Results highlight that IS could effectively reduce CO₂ emissions. The total reduction potential amounts to 3944.05 thousands tCO₂/year and 2347.88 thousands tCO₂/year in Jinan and Liuzhou. Finally, policy implications on the ever-improvement of industrial symbiosis and China's sustainable urban development are proposed and discussed.     

The rise of community wind power in Japan: Enhanced acceptance through social innovation

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the socio-economic dynamics that are brought about by renewable energy technologies. We call this dynamic “Social Innovation” as it changes the rules of risk–benefit distribution and the roles of social actors. For this purpose, we take up a typical case in Japan, community wind power in which the initial cost is funded by the investment of citizens. Through this case study, we examine how the citizens’ initiative can affect the social acceptance of renewable energy as well as social change. Based on interviews with those involved in these projects, we analyze the interests of the various actors involved in community wind power projects in a framework of “actor network theory”, which enables us to understand the detail of each actor's position. This study also involved a quantitative survey of investors. The case study clarified that there was a remarkable difference in the interests of the main actors in the community wind power projects, the networks are complex and actors share various interests such as economic interests and a sense of social commitment, participation and contribution. These incentives are also clarified in quantitative data. However, the variety of incentives differs in each project.     

Factors influencing success of wind-diesel hybrid systems in remote Alaska communities: Results of an informal survey

In 2008, the Alaska State Legislature created and funded the Renewable Energy Fund (REF) grant program. As a result of this significant increase in available funding, the number of wind-diesel hybrid power systems is growing dramatically in rural Alaska. Development, integration, and operation of complex wind technologies in remote, rural communities are challenging. With multiple communities in Alaska installing and operating these systems, it is important to understand the factors that influence successful completion, operation and long-term maintenance of projects. As of December 2013, over $340 million has been spent constructing wind projects in 30 communities. The majority of these systems was built since 2008 and utilized over $50 million in appropriations from the REF by the Alaska legislature. This report summarizes the findings of an informal survey conducted on the most important characteristics of a successful wind-diesel hybrid power project in small remote rural communities. The survey was done to help guide socioeconomic research in Alaska on community capacity to ensure sustainable projects.     

荆—枫±500 kV同塔双回直流线路的极导线布置研究

根据直流输电线路的主要设计原则和特点,通过仿真计算,从电磁环境、过电压水平、雷电性能及线路运行维护等方面对荆—枫±500 kV同塔双回直流线路的4种极导线布置方案进行了分析比较,并确定了最佳极导线布置方案。所得结果已用于荆—枫±500 kV同塔双回直流输电线路设计中,且工程项目已良好运行超过1年,验证了该设计方案的实用性和有效性。     

Socio-economic drivers of large urban biomass cogeneration: Sustainable energy supply for Austria's capital Vienna

This paper provides a detailed case study on Austria's by far largest biomass cogeneration plant. The plant is located in the city of Vienna and scheduled to be put into operation by mid-2006. Given the urban location of the plant and its significant biomass fuel input requirements, fuel delivery logistics play an important role—not only from an economic point of view, but also in relation to supply security and environmental impact. We describe and analyse the history of the project, putting particular emphasis on the main driving forces and actors behind the entire project development process. From this analysis we deduce the following main socio-economic drivers and success factors for the realisation of large bioenergy projects in urban settings: (1) a critical mass of actors; (2) a priori political consensus; (3) the existence of a problem (and problem awareness) that calls for decisive steps to be taken; (4) institutional innovation and changes in the mindset of the main decision makers; (5) favourable economic conditions; (6) change agents that are actively engaged from an early stage of development; (7) intra-firm supporters at different hierarchical levels and from different departments; and (8) targeted study tours that help to reduce uncertainty, to enable leapfrogging in project planning and design, and to build up confidence in the project's feasibility and chance of success.     

Beyond the EPBD: The low energy residential settlement Borgo Solare

The European Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) imposes the adoption of measures for improving the energy efficiency in buildings. These measures should take into account the local weather conditions as well as internal thermal environment and cost-effectiveness. In this respect, Italy is a very interesting benchmark. For Northern Italy, the climatic context is particularly difficult to deal with cold winters and hot summers. The legislations are changing very rapidly, but has not fully adapted to the local context. The considered methodology still involves winter heating while summer cooling is addressed in incomplete and inadequate ways. The energy issue is addressed only partially as final energy consumption, but with little attention to LCA. Moreover, the belief that the buildings with high energy savings are too expensive, and therefore not attractive from economic point of view. For these reasons, it is very important to develop case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of sustainable energy in architecture, according to a holistic approach. This paper describes a detailed techno–economic analysis for Borgo Solare project, an extremely advanced and innovative residential settlement designed on sustainable architecture concepts. One of the most innovative aspects of the project is that it is not just an experimental operation but Borgo Solare is a real urban district, which will be built without public funds and should be inhabited by common people. Excellent energy performance, therefore, must be accompanied by affordable market prices. The energy and economical analysis is presented taking into account also the embodied energy of the building. The results on the performance of a sample building (case study) of this settlement are reported, according to different construction standards: prior to EPBD, present from the EPBD and more efficient developed specifically for the project. It has been shown that using the better design practices and technologies the higher initial embodied energy in a low energy building could quickly paid back during its life span. The economic analysis, in the same way, evidences that higher initial investment in case of energy efficient building could become economically convenient during the life span of the building. This kind of analysis is essential to determine the actual sustainability of a building.     

Two year experience in the operation of the first community photovoltaic system in Cuba

Although the photovoltaic technologies have been introduced in Cuba for more than 10 years, the long-term stable operation is still an aspiration. With the setting in operation of the first community photovoltaic electrification system, it was possible to carry out a systematic study of the factors that determine the loss of quality of the operative state of the systems by means of the detection and classification of failures detected in periodic technical inspections. The data analyzed on the basis of the medium frequency of failures allowed discovering problems of technology and its social adoption. This analysis leads to the design of a system for maintenance and repair that guarantees the sustainability of the project. The technical characteristics of the equipment that adapts better to the real conditions of exploitation in the country were determined as well.     

Urbanisation and its impact on building energy consumption and efficiency in China

The People's Republic of China and its 1.3 billion people have experienced a rapid economic growth in the past two decades. China's urbanisation ratio rose from around 20% in the early 1980s to 45% in 2007 [China Urban Research Committee. Green building. Beijing: Chinese Construction Industrial Publish House; 2008. ISBN 978-7-112-09925-2.]. The large volume and rapid speed of building construction rarely have been seen in global development and cause substantial pressure on resources and the environment. Government policy makers and building professionals, including architects, building engineers, project managers and property developers, should play an important role in enhancing the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the building energy efficiency process in forming the sustainable urban development. This paper addresses the emerging issues relating to building energy consumption and building energy efficiency due to the fast urbanisation development in China.     

Offshore wind turbine reliability and operational simulation under uncertainties

The fast‐growing offshore wind energy sector brings opportunities to provide a sustainable energy resource but also challenges in offshore wind turbine (OWT) operation and maintenance management. Existing operational simulation models assume deterministic input reliability and failure cost data, whereas OWT reliability and failure costs vary depending on several factors, and it is often not possible to specify them with certainty. This paper focuses on modelling reliability and failure cost uncertainties and their impacts on OWT operational and economic performance. First, we present a probabilistic method for modelling reliability data uncertainty with a quantitative parameter estimation from available reliability data resources. Then, failure cost uncertainty is modelled using fuzzy logic that relates a component's failure cost to its capital cost and downtime. A time‐sequential Monte Carlo simulation is presented to simulate operational sequences of OWT components. This operation profile is later fed into a fuzzy cost assessment and coupled with a wind power curve model to evaluate OWT availability, energy production, operational expenditures and levelised cost of energy. A case study with different sets of reliability data is presented, and the results show that impacts of uncertainty on OWT performance are magnified in databases with low components' reliability. In addition, both reliability and cost uncertainties can contribute to more than 10% of the cost of energy variation. This research can provide practitioners with methods to handle data uncertainties in reliability and operational simulation of OWTs and help them to quantify the variability and dependence of wind power performance on data uncertainties.     

Effects of different pin-fin interruptions on performance of a nanofluid-cooled zigzag miniature heat sink (MHS)

In order to optimize the thermal-hydraulic performance of a nanofluid-cooled zigzag miniature heat sink (MHS), six different pin-fin interruptions are proposed in the present experimental study. The obtained results show that interrupting the pin-fins has meaningful influences on heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of the zigzag MHS. For instance, replacing the interrupted MHSs with the basic configuration, i.e. integral MHS, varies the overall heat transfer coefficient in the range of − 19% to + 23%. At the studied ranges, the maximum value of overall heat transfer coefficient is found as 15,255 W/m² K at the mass flow rate of 0.02 kg/s corresponding to a specific interrupted MHS. It is detected that all the interrupted MHSs have lower values of the pressure drop in comparison with the integral MHS. It is also found that the cooling performance of the nanofluid-cooled MHSs is greater than the water-cooled MHSs. Finally, the obtained results in the current work may have considerable practical significance as it relates to the design of efficient MHSs.     

Community perspectives of wind energy in Australia: The application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance

Decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community's social well-being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair. Justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day-to-day interactions. Outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests, damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others. Through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study, community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness. Findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome, and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome. A key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice, namely by outcome fairness, outcome favourability and process fairness. Based on this finding, a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome.     

Governance of the emerging bio-energy markets

Despite its promising prospects, a growing global bio-energy market may have sustainability risks as well. Governing this market with respect to installing safeguards to ensure sustainable biomass production might reduce these risks. Therefore, proposals for governance systems for bio-energy are discussed in this article. The proposals are based on comparative case study research on the governance of comparable commodities. By assessing the governance system of global coffee trade, fair trade coffee, the global and the EU sugar market and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wood, strong and weak points of governance systems for commodities are discerned. FSC is selected as the best performing case study and serves as the proposal's basis. FSC's weaknesses are minimized by, among others, using the lessons learned from the other case studies. This results in a system consisting of two pillars, a bio-energy labelling organization (BLO) and a United Nations Agreement on Bio-energy (UNAB). Although consulted experts in the research process are critical about this system they do suggest several conditions a governance system for bio-energy should meet in order to be effective, such as a facilitative government, professional monitoring and using progressive certification combined with price premiums. These conditions have been taken into account in the final proposal.     

基于BIM技术的堤防工程运维信息管理系统设计与实现

为加强水利信息化建设,解决运维管理中传统的单纯通过人工管理、信息化水平落后、管理水平较低的问题,通过引入建筑信息模型(BIM),将堤防运维基础管理信息、巡检养护信息、堤防工情水情信息与堤防BIM模型相结合,实现不同类别运维信息的动态可视化管理。引入QR code二维码技术与SQL数据库技术,实现在BIM模型中查询堤防工程运维状态。同时引用UWB技术与BIM集成管理和UWB电子围栏技术最终实现堤防工程巡查养护的数字化、精细化、规范化管理的目标。     

Relativistic moving heat source

The relativistic heat conduction (RHCE) model is particularly important in the analysis of processes involving moving heat sources (MHS) at speeds or frequencies comparable with those of heat propagation in the medium. This paper establishes a unified framework for solving heat conduction problems using the RHCE model. It offers “Fundamental Solutions” in one, two, and three spatial dimensions, for the transient response due to an instantaneous point MHS. Moreover, it presents the transient response due to a continuous point MHS, the quasi-steady response due a periodic point MHS, as well as guidelines for solving the RHCE equation under various loading and boundary conditions.     

Place-making and trust-building: The influence of policy on host community responses to wind farms

This article assesses the impact of wind energy policy choices on host community responses. Two key explanations (place-making and trust-building) for host community responses are identified from the substantial social science literature investigating local community reaction to wind farms. The relationship between these two key factors and policy choices is explored through a comparative case study of five wind farms during a time of major policy change in Ontario, Canada. These five wind projects are all located within a 50 km of each other but are built under different policy regimes, with different ownership arrangements and are of different sizes. They provide a basis to assess the impact of three specific policy elements – approval authority, community benefit arrangements and spatial restrictions of turbine placement – on the place-making and trust-building potential of wind projects in the host communities. We identify a wide range of interactions and conclude that the policy choice to elevate project approval to a central authority has had the most damaging effect.     

Costs of reducing water use of concentrating solar power to sustainable levels: Scenarios for North Africa

Concentrating solar power (CSP) has the potential to become a leading sustainable energy technology for the European electricity system. In order to reach a substantial share in the energy mix, European investment in CSP appears most profitable in North Africa, where solar potential is significantly higher than in southern Europe. As well as sufficient solar irradiance, however, the majority of today's CSP plants also require a considerable amount of water, primarily for cooling purposes. In this paper we examine water usage associated with CSP in North Africa, and the cost penalties associated with technologies that could reduce those needs. We inspect four representative sites to compare the ecological and economical drawbacks from conventional and alternative cooling systems, depending on the local environment, and including an outlook with climate change to the mid-century. Scaling our results up to a regional level indicates that the use of wet cooling technologies would likely be unsustainable. Dry cooling systems, as well as sourcing of alternative water supplies, would allow for sustainable operation. Their cost penalty would be minor compared to the variance in CSP costs due to different average solar irradiance values.     

Sustainability assessment of cogeneration sector development in Croatia

The effective and rational energy generation and supply is one of the main presumptions of sustainable development. Combined heat and power production, or co-generation, has clear environmental advantages by increasing energy efficiency and decreasing carbon emissions. However, higher investment cost and more complicated design and maintenance sometimes-present disadvantages from the economical viability point of view. As in the case of most of economies in transition in Central and Eastern Europe, Croatia has a strong but not very efficient co-generation sector, delivering 12% of the final energy consumption. District heating systems in the country's capital Zagreb and in city of Osijek represent the large share of the overall co-generation capacity. Besides district heating, co-generation in industry sector is also relatively well developed. The paper presents an attempt to assess the sustainability of Croatian co-generation sector future development. The sustainability assessment requires multi-criteria assessment of specific scenarios to be taken into consideration. In this respect three scenarios of Croatian co-generation sector future development are taken into consideration and for each of them environmental, social and economic sustainability indicators are defined and calculated. The assessment of complex relationships between environmental, social and economic aspects of the system is based on the multi-criteria decision-making procedure. The sustainability assessment is based on the General Sustainability Index rating for different cases reflecting different criteria and their priority. The method of sustainability assessment is applied to the Croatian co-generation sector contributing to the evaluation of different strategies and definition of a foundation for policy related to the sustainable future cogeneration sector development.