Optimization of Electric Power Leveling Systems by Taper‐Off‐Reflectance Particle Swarm Optimization

It has become desirable to develop energy control technologies for environmental issues such as global warming and exhaustion of fossil fuel. Power fluctuations in large power consumer facilities may cause instability of electric power systems and increase the cost of the electric power facilities and electricity charges. Developing electric power leveling systems (EPLS) to compensate power fluctuations is necessary for future electric power systems. EPLS with an SMES has been proposed as one countermeasure for use in electric power quality improvement. SMES is superior to other energy storage devices in response and storage efficiency. The authors have proposed EPLS based on fuzzy control with SMES. For this practical implementation, optimizing the control gain and SMES capacity is an important issue. This paper proposes a new method for optimization of the EPLS. The proposed algorithm is a novel particle swarm optimization based on taper‐off reflectance (TRPSO). The proposed TRPSO optimizes the design variables of the EPLS efficiently and effectively. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 186(3): 10–18, 2014; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.22472     

Protein synthesis and degradation change rapidly in response to food intake in muscle of food-deprived mice

The short-term changes in muscle protein synthesis and degradation after food intake are unclear. We investigated muscle protein metabolism after food intake in mice that were starved for 18 h and refed for 1 h. Protein synthesis activity was estimated by the polysome profiles, and protein degradation was estimated by plasma N tau-methylhistidine (MeHis) concentration, reflecting translational activity and myofibrillar protein degradation, respectively. MeHis is an index of myofibrillar protein degradation because it is not reused for protein synthesis and it is not metabolized. Stimulation of protein synthesis (polysome profile) and the reduction of protein degradation (plasma N tau-methylhistidine concentration) were observed immediately after feeding began. Protein synthesis returned to the prefeeding level by 6 h after refeeding, whereas protein degradation remained at a low level. The decreased plasma MeHis concentration after refeeding was not due to a decrease in MeHis release from muscle cells and an increase in the free MeHis pool size, because the changes in free MeHis concentration in muscle were similar to that of plasma. Plasma insulin concentration immediately rose with feeding and it returned to the prefeeding level by 3 h after refeeding. These results suggest that responses of postprandial protein metabolism are very rapid and that protein synthesis is regulated by insulin, whereas degradation is regulated by insulin and other dietary factors. Thus the ability of skeletal muscle to use nutrients more effectively by stimulating protein synthesis and reducing protein degradation may cause the accelerated rate of protein accretion in skeletal muscle during the short postprandial period.     

A new approach to an individual‐phase reactive power compensator for nonsinusoidal and unbalanced three‐phase systems

Many researchers have attempted to clarify the definitions of active power, reactive power, active current, reactive current, etc. for unbalanced and nonsinusoidal three‐phase situations. The so‐called pq theory has given a new definition of instantaneous reactive power, and it has been discussed and developed by many authors. In this paper, the merits and demerits of the instantaneous reactive power compensator are discussed. It is shown theoretically that applying instantaneous reactive power compensation to unbalanced three‐phase systems has a serious disadvantage in that it causes third‐order harmonic currents on the source side, which problem cannot be avoided. To overcome this problem the authors propose a new approach, and name it the “quasi‐instantaneous” reactive power compensator. It compensates individual‐phase reactive currents. The basic principles of the quasi‐instantaneous reactive current compensator are discussed in detail, and its validity is confirmed using digital simulation. In particular the authors show that the power factor of each phase becomes unity on the source side, but the source currents remain unbalanced when the proposed method is applied. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 139(3): 73–81, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.1162     

A multi-phase AC arc discharge and its application in in-flight thermal treatment of raw glass powders

The in-flight melting technology with multi-phase alternating current (AC) arc was developed for the purpose of saving energy and shortening production cycle for glass industry. The 6-phase arc and 12-phase arc were used to investigate the in-flight melting behavior of soda-lime and alkali-free glass powders. Results showed that the vitrification degree of raw materials and the shrinkage of particle diameter increased with the increase of input power. The higher melting temperature and viscosity were responsible for the lower vitrification degree of alkali-free glass powders. Compared with 6-phase arc, 12-phase arc improved the vitrification degree of raw material for the longer residence time and higher plasma temperature under the same transformer current. The high vitrification degree achieved in short time indicated that the new in-flight melting technology with multi-phase ac arc would be a promising method for energy conservation in glass industry.     

Effects of low casein and fish oil on hyperlipidemia and proteinuria in nephritic rats

The effects of amino acid-fortified low casein and fish oil (FO) diets on hyperlipidemia and proteinuria were studied in rats with nephrotoxic serum nephritis. After an antiserum injection, rats were maintained for 14 d on four different experimental diets: a 20% casein diet containing corn oil (CO) or FO, or an 8% casein diet supplemented with cystine plus threonine containing CO or FO. The 8% casein diets reduced urinary protein excretion in nephritic rats without inducing severe growth retardation or fatty liver compared with the basal 20% casein diets. Both the 8% casein diet and the FO diet decreased serum cholesterol, triglyceride and phospholipid levels in nephritic rats, and nonesterified fatty acid levels were decreased by FO feeding. In nephritic animals, hepatic cholesterol synthesis was decreased by the 8% casein diets compared with the 20% casein diets, and tended to be reduced by FO feeding between groups at the same casein levels. No effect of diet was observed on fatty acid synthesis among the nephritic rats. FO administration to the nephritic animals suppressed fecal steroid excretion. While lipoprotein lipase activity was unchanged among the nephritic rats, hepatic triglyceride lipase activity was reduced by either the 8% casein or FO diet. The results suggest that the hypolipidemic action of low casein diets may, at least in part, be due to reduced hepatic cholesterol synthesis and suppressed triglyceride secretion from the liver. They also suggest that the hypolipidemic action of FO may, at least in part, be due to reduced hepatic cholesterol synthesis and decreased fatty acid mobilization from peripheral adipose tissue.     

A power smoothing control method for a photovoltaic generation system using a water electrolyzer and its filtering characteristics

This paper proposes a novel power smoothing control method for a photovoltaic generation (PV) system using a water electrolyzer (ELY). This method realizes that the long‐period components of the PV power fluctuation are supplied to the power grid and the short‐period components of the PV power fluctuation are supplied to the ELY. The power supplied to the ELY is converted to hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. The results of the power smoothing control method are evaluated in terms of the power in the load frequency control (LFC) band and the ability of generating hydrogen. Furthermore, filtering characteristics of the proposed method are clarified. As the result, the proposed method has reduced the power in LFC band by 83.7% compared to the PV power without the power smoothing control. The filter characteristics of the proposed method have shown that fluctuating components with periods less than 1000 seconds, in which the step voltage regulator does not perform, can be sufficiently eliminated from the PV power fluctuation components. When applying the proposed method for a PV system rated at 800 kW, the ability of generating hydrogen was about 2.30% of the hydrogen required for one hydrogen station.     

A matching transformer‐less inrush current suppressor for transformers using a series‐connected small‐rated voltage‐source PWM converter—consideration of the control gains and required ratings of the PWM converter

This paper proposes a new inrush current suppressor using a series‐connected small‐rated PWM converter for a transformer. The PWM converter is directly connected in series between the source and transformer without a matching transformer. The inrush phenomena of the matching transformer, thus, can be avoided. The control gain and required ratings of the series‐connected small‐rated PWM converter are discussed in detail. The capacity of the DC capacitor of the PWM converter is also discussed considering the active power flows into the PWM converter. The PSCAD/EMTDC is used to verify the validity of the proposed inrush current suppressor. A prototype experimental model is constructed and tested. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed suppressor can perfectly overcome the inrush phenomena of transformers. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 160(3): 45–55, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www. interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20374     

A parallel algorithm for allocation of spare cells on memory chips

The authors propose a parallel algorithm based on the artificial neural network model for solving the spare-allocation problem. The goal is to find a spare allocation which repairs all the faulty cells in the given faulty-cell map. The parallel algorithm requires 2n processing elements for the n×n faulty-cell map problem. The algorithm is verified by many simulation runs. Under the simulation the algorithm finds one of the near-optimum solutions in a nearly constant time with O(n) processors. The simulation results show the consistency of this algorithm. The algorithm can be easily extended for solving rectangular or other shapes of fault map problems     

A PWM-controlled rectifier step up/down output voltage with a high power factor

It is desirable that the rectifier that is an ac-to-dc converter, have the characteristics of fast response and the wide range of the output voltage control, and the sinusoidal source current waveform. In this paper, a step up/down output voltage PWM-controlled rectifier is proposed. The features of the proposed rectifier are as follows. (1) The calculation of pulsewidth is based on the geometrical technique and the source current can be inphase with the source voltage. (2) The output voltage is controlled from about zero to more than the maximum value of the source voltage. The aforementioned features are clarified by simulation and the steady-state characteristics are discussed. Further, these results are verified in experiment using the microprocessor-based control system.     

A binary Hopfield neural-network approach for satellite broadcastscheduling problems

This paper presents a binary Hopfield neural network approach for finding a broadcasting schedule in a low-altitude satellite system. Our neural network is composed of simple binary neurons on the synchronous parallel computation, which is greatly suitable for implementation on a digital machine. With the help of heuristic methods, the neural network of a maximum of 200000 neurons can always find near-optimum solutions on a conventional workstation in our simulations.