Demand response for home energy management system

The optimization of energy consumption, with consequent cost reduction, is one of the main challenges for the present and future smart grid. Demand response (DR) program is expected to be vital in home energy management system (HEMS) which aims to schedule the operation of appliances to save energy costs by considering customer convenience as well as characteristics of electric appliances. The DR program is a challenging optimization problem especially when the formulations are non-convex or NP-hard problems. In order to solve this challenging optimization problem efficiently, an effective heuristic approach is proposed to achieve a near optimal solution with low computational costs. Different from previously proposed methods in literatures which are not suitable to be run in embedded devices such as a smart meter. The proposed algorithm can be implemented in an embedded device which has severe limitations on memory size and computational power, and can get an optimal value in real-time. Numerical studies were carried out with the data simulating practical scenarios are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Study on maximum power point tracking of photovoltaic array in irregular shadow

Traditional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods can hardly find global maximum power point (MPP) because output characteristics curve of photovoltaic (PV) array may have multi local maximum power points in irregular shadow, and thus easily fall into the local maximum power point. To address this drawback, Considering that sliding mode variable structure (SMVS) control strategy have such advantages as simple structure, fast response and strong robustness, and P&O method have the advantages of simple principle and convenient implementation, so a new algorithm combining SMVS control method and P&O method is proposed, besides, PI controller is applied to reduce system chattering caused by switching sliding surface. It is applied to MPPT control of PV array in irregular shadow to solve the problem of multi-peak optimization in partial shadow. In order to verity the rationality of the proposed algorithm, the experimental circuit is built, which achieves MPPT control by means of the proposed algorithm and P&O method. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional P&O algorithm, the proposed algorithm can fast track the global MPP, tracking speed increases by 60% and the relative error decreased by 20%. Moreover, the system becomes more stable near the MPP, the fluctuations of output power is greatly reduced, and thus make full use of solar energy.     

Electrochemical growth and characterization of iron doped cadmium sulfide thin films

Cadmium Sulfide and Ferrous doped Cadmium Sulfide thin films have been prepared on different substrates using an electrodeposition technique. Linear sweep voltammetric analysis has been carried out to determine deposition potential of the prepared films. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the prepared films possess polycrystalline nature with hexagonal structure. Surface morphology and film composition have been analyzed using Scanning electron microscopy and Energy dispersive analysis by X-rays. Optical absorption analysis showed that the prepared films are found to exhibit Band gap value in the range between 2.3, 2.8 eV for Cadmium Sulfide and Ferrous doped Cadmium Sulfide.     

Theoretical study of the structural,elastic and thermodynamic properties of chalcopyrite ZnGeP2

The structural, elastic, and thermodynamic properties of ZnGeP₂ with chalcopyrite structure are investigated using the pseudo-potentials plane wave method based on the density functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation. The lattice parameters (a, c and u) are directly calculated and agree well with previous experimental and theoretical results. The obtained negative formation enthalpy shows that ZnGeP₂ crystal has strong structural stability. We have also calculated the bulk modulus B and the elastic parameters (C₁₁, C₁₂, C₁₃, C₃₃, C₄₄, and C₆₆) which have not been measured yet. The accuracy and reliability of the calculated elastic constants of ZnGeP₂ crystal are discussed. In addition, the pressure and temperature dependencies of the lattice parameters, bulk modulus, Debye temperature, Grüneisen parameter, entropy, volume thermal expansion coefficient, and specific heat capacity are obtained in the ranges of 0–20 GPa and 0–1200 K using the quasi-harmonic Debye model. To our knowledge this is the first quantitative theoretical prediction of the thermodynamic properties for ZnGeP₂ compound and still awaits experimental confirmations.     

Stereo matching cost computation based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform

A new matching cost computation method based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) for stereo image matching is proposed in this paper. Firstly, stereo image is decomposed into high frequency sub-band images at different scales and along different directions by NSCT. Secondly, by utilizing coefficients in high frequency domain and grayscales in RGB color space, the computation model of weighted matching cost between two pixels is designed based on the gestalt laws. Lastly, two types of experiments are carried out with standard stereopairs in the Middlebury benchmark. One of the experiments is to confirm optimum values of NSCT scale and direction parameters, and the other is to compare proposed matching cost with nine known matching costs. Experimental results show that the optimum values of scale and direction parameters are respectively 2 and 3, and the matching accuracy of the proposed matching cost is twice higher than that of traditional NCC cost.     

Covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy based design of fixed structure robust H∞ loop shaping controller

This paper proposes the application of Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) in fixed structure H_∞ loop shaping controller design. Integral Time Absolute Error (ITAE) performance requirement is incorporated as a constraint with an objective of maximization of stability margin in the fixed structure H_∞ loop shaping controller design problem. Pneumatic servo system, separating tower process and F18 fighter aircraft system are considered as test systems. The CMA-ES designed fixed structure H_∞ loop-shaping controller is compared with the traditional H_∞ loop shaping controller, non-smooth optimization and Heuristic Kalman Algorithm (HKA) based fixed structure H_∞ loop shaping controllers in terms of stability margin. 20% perturbation in the nominal plant is used to validate the robustness of the CMA-ES designed H_∞ loop shaping controller. The effect of Finite Word Length (FWL) is considered to show the implementation difficulties of controller in digital processors. Simulation results demonstrated that CMA-ES based fixed structure H_∞ loop shaping controller is suitable for real time implementation with good robust stability and performance.     

Graph-based video fingerprinting using double optimal projection

A double optimal projection method that involves projections for intra-cluster and inter-cluster dimensionality reduction are proposed for video fingerprinting. The video is initially set as a graph with frames as its vertices in a high-dimensional space. A similarity measure that can compute the weights of the edges is then proposed. Subsequently, the video frames are partitioned into different clusters based on the graph model. Double optimal projection is used to explore the optimal mapping points in a low-dimensional space to reduce the video dimensions. The statistics and geometrical fingerprints are generated to determine whether a query video is copied from one of the videos in the database. During matching, the video can be roughly matched by utilizing the statistics fingerprint. Further matching is thereafter performed in the corresponding group using geometrical fingerprints. Experimental results show the good performance of the proposed video fingerprinting method in robustness and discrimination.