Domestic demand-side response with heat pumps: controls and tariffs

ABSTRACT

Electric heat pumps feature prominently in projected energy transitions in the UK and elsewhere. Owing to their high electricity consumption, heat pumps are viewed as important targets for demand-side response (DSR). Findings are presented from a field trial of a new control system that aims to optimize heat pump performance, including under time-varying tariff conditions. The trial involved monitoring 76 properties with heat pumps, but without dedicated heat storage; 31 of these received the control system. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of 12 participants. The controller successfully evened out electricity demand over the day (reducing the evening peak), but this was associated with increased late night and daytime temperatures. Interview participants reported some disturbance owing to overnight heating and noise, as well as usability issues with the controller interface and hardware. These issues present risks to the future acceptability of such systems. While the system delivered short-term demand reductions successfully, longer-term demand shifting risked causing unacceptable disturbance to occupants. Future control systems could overcome some of the issues identified in this pioneering trial through more effective zoning, using temperature caps or installing dedicated heat storage, but these may either limit the available flexibility or be challenging to achieve.     

Primary energy demand and energy costs of fixed-bed drying using the example of chamomile flowers

Abstract

Energy use efficiency in the drying of medicinal and aromatic plants is largely determined by weather conditions and process parameters. While the former are beyond control, the latter can be optimized. In order to achieve such optimization, different energy supply variants, based on typical operating conditions of batch-type grate drying in Thuringia, Germany, were analyzed. It was found that partial air recirculation and integration of heat pumps allow substantial savings in primary energy. However, under the constraint of German energy prices, significant savings in energy costs can only be achieved if combined heat and power generation systems are applied at the same time.     

Robust adaptive passivity-based PIλD control

In this article, we develop proportional, fractional-integral, and derivative () controllers for the regulation and tracking problems of nonlinear systems. The analytic results are obtained by extending the passivity-based approach to include fractional operators. Robustness under parametric uncertainty is dealt with by a combination with an adaptive scheme. It is also shown their robustness under additive noise and their robustness under uncertainty in the derivation order. The advantages in the controlled system performance and in the control energy consumption in comparison to classic PI and proportional integral derivative controllers are illustrated for the quadratic boost converter and a benchmark system in the literature.     

Study of equivalent efficiency calibration method for radioactive gas source measured on HPGe detectors

ABSTRACT

In view of the complexity of current detection efficiency calibration of radioactive gas sources, a method using solid planar sources to be equivalent to gas sources was studied. For the 50 mL gas source box, an optimal equivalent scheme was selected by Monte Carlo Simulations. Then, the full-energy-peak efficiency curve of gas sources at the measurement position of 25 cm, with source-to-detector distance of 25 cm, was fitted by measuring solid planar sources with known activity. To verify the accuracy of the efficiency curve, ⁴¹Ar, ¹³³Xe and ⁸⁷Kr gases were produced and determined by length-compensated method. Then, their full-energy-peak efficiencies at 25 cm position away from the detector were directly calibrated. The percentage efficiency deviations between interpolation from the efficiency curve and direct calibration are all less than 2.5%, which proves the accuracy of the equivalent method. This calibration method is a general one and can be also used for some other radioactive sample measurements, such as non-destructive analysis of gaseous fission product samples with a suitable source-to-detector distance.     

Hybrid-triggered fault detection filter design for networked Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy systems subject to persistent heavy noise disturbance

In the network environment, the single time-triggered scheme wastes limited bandwidth resources due to all the sampled data are transmitted to the networks, and the single event-triggered scheme may increase system error because of ignoring factors such as changes in network utilization. To reduce the design conservatism, this paper is concerned with the hybrid-triggered L₁ fault detection filter design for a class of nonlinear networked control systems (NCSs) described by Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model. Taking the effects of time-triggered scheme and event-triggered scheme into consideration simultaneously, we construct a fuzzy fault detection system. New results on stability and L₁ performance are proposed for fuzzy fault detection system by exploiting the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and by means of the integral inequality method. Specially, attention is focused on the design of fault detection filter that guarantees a prescribed L₁ noise attenuation level . Finally, two examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

The effect of measurement error on the performance of Mann-Whitney and Signed-Rank nonparametric control charts

Mann-Whitney and Signed-Rank control charts are two well-known nonparametric charts used for controlling the center of the process when the distribution of the process parameter is unknown or nonnormal. Considering the effect of measurement error on the performance of control charts, the mentioned effect with additive model is investigated on Mann-Whitney and Signed-Rank charts. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the two charts and a Shewhart-type $\overline{\mathrm{X}}$ chart (as a parametric one) in the presence of the error. To do so, a simulation program is used and average run length (ARL) of the charts are calculated under three distributions. The results for all three distributions show that the existence of measurement error weakens the performances of both nonparametric charts and larger values of the variance of the error will increase the effect. A numerical example is also discussed to show the effect on the performance of the charts. Multiple measurements is used as a way to decrease the effect of measurement error. Knowing the fact that it requires extra time and money, it can be used in real cases depending on the financial limitations of the user.     

几种配合料加水系统及特点

分析总结了几种常见配合料加水系统及其特点,并结合生产实际提出了不同系统的利弊和使用要点.     

三级连续碳化法生产纳米碳酸钙新工艺研究

采用有效容积依次递增的预塔、中塔、后塔三个碳化塔串联,塔内气液连续逆流操作、塔间气液连续并流或错流操作,严格控制氢氧化钙浆液的浓度、流量、温度和碳化气的浓度、流量,并通过pH计或电导仪进行跟踪检测碳化度,可实现纳米碳酸钙生产工艺连续化、产品质量稳定化、产量规模化.