By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Sun, 2007-04-08 16:50
This blog's subject is the electricity system, a major and growing part of the world's current and future energy system. Electricity is a high quality energy carrier, convertible into any energy service with high efficiency. Its use is growing fast, partly because we use electricity for more things, and partly because electricity displaces other energy carriers for example in transport (high speed rail), heating (industrial processes) or cooking.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Wed, 2009-06-03 15:12
With "island grids" we refer to isolated electricity networks with a relatively small demand. This may be networks on actual islands but also distant isolated network on the continent. Most of the island grids make use of diesel units for their generation. Larger systems may also use combined cycle gas turbine units or oil fired steam turbine units. The generating cost of such systems are relatively high compared to large systems due to the economy of scale and the use of expensive fuels.
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By HDK / Published on Wed, 2009-05-27 07:52
Recently, electricity consumers have shown increasing concern for power quality. Indeed, power quality standards have become higher than before for certain customers due to sensitivity of automation devices. In addition, power quality is affected by the deregulation of power markets in Turkey.
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By HDK / Published on Mon, 2009-05-25 15:54
The delivery of electricity to consumers is influenced by demand and supply factors. Using DSR influences the customer’s behavior by offering the customer the choice to buy electricity now, to refrain from buying, buy less/more, or to buy at some other time. This may result in the same supply capacity and overall reliability for less capital and a reduction of the greenhouse gasses, due to efficient use of the production capacity.
How much do you expect DSR would reduce electricity bills?
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Wed, 2009-05-13 05:30
Trade-off between environment and health
When discussing sustainable building services (HVAC, electricity, and water), the main factors that are usually considered are environmental impact, financial cost, comfort, and sometimes safety. Although carbon emission reduction is rightfully dominating the debate nowadays, we must not forget that health can be an important fifth factor when designing sustainable building services. This is made abundantly clear in the PhD thesis 'Healthy Building Services for the 21st Century' of Francesco Franchimon at the Technical University of Eindhoven.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Fri, 2009-05-08 05:30
A YouTube video of the National Fire Protection Association
In the past on this blog, we have shown many pictures of unsafe electrical wiring in the slums of developing countries like Senegal or emerging economies like Brazil. This does not mean however that electrical safety ceased to be an issue in OECD countries. In the USA, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recently launched a campaign to show the risk of an inappropriate electrical installation and to promote correct electrical wiring. The campaign includes a Home Wiring guide and a ten minute YouTube video. The video explains how electrical faults can lead to fatal fires and enumerates attention points to make a residential electrical installation safe:
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Tue, 2009-04-21 15:10
Grid parity - the point where the cost of generating electricity by solar systems equalises the average (wholesale) price of generating electricity by means of conventional methods - is the Holy Grail for the photovoltaics industry. For concentrating photovoltaics in the sunniest locations in the world, this point is not far off. The most optimistic estimates put it at 2011, whereas pessimists expect we'll have to wait as long as 2020. Therefore, a prediction market at Leonardo Visions to build a consensus view among Leonardo ENERGY users on this important issue.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Sat, 2009-01-17 12:06
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Electricity Advisory Committee (EAC) has released three reports prepared for the Secretary of Energy's consideration. These reports review challenges facing DOE and the Nation in many important electricity areas, and include recommendations for policy and program initiatives. They address issues surrounding generation and transmission adequacy, energy efficiency and demand response, deployment of energy storage technologies, and deployment of smart grid technologies. The EAC was chartered by Secretary Samuel W.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Wed, 2008-10-15 13:01
A recent report from IEA explores how variable renewables can be integrated on a large-scale into the electricity system.
The report proposes to replace the term 'intermittency' with 'variability'. Calling renewables intermittent is misleading, since wind or solar power do not drop from full power to zero and vice versa - they are available at some level much of the time, and ramp up or down following gradients dictated by weather.
The main theme of the report is that hosting capacity of the electricity system for variable renewables can be much larger than previously reported, provided that a number of
measures are taken to increase system flexibility. The approach
recognises the problem, but offers solutions.
A number of
strategies are presented to smooth the effect of variability or to
increase flexibility of the electricity system to absorb it.
Smoothing factors:
- system-wide aggregation: aggregating wind or solar power over a wider area reduces variability
- Aggregation of the output of different generation technologies
- Better forecasting
Flexibility sources:
- Fast-response capacity in the generation portfolio
- Availability of storage
- Stronger interconnections of transmission systems
- Demand-side management and response
While there is no intrinsic ceiling to hosting variable renewables,
current networks may be inadequate for large-scale incorporation.
Substantial changes to networks and system operation will be needed.
And whatever the mix of above solutions adopted, there remains large
uncertainty on the cost and reliability of the resulting system.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Mon, 2008-04-07 17:15
By Stefan Fassbinder
The German Federal Minister for the Environment would like to ban the use of incandescent tungsten-filament light bulbs. For instance, one of the issues raised is that of dimming. As most of the dimmers installed are used to control incandescent bulbs, it’s worth taking a closer look at the issues involved.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2008-04-03 12:11
A clever tool to provide electricity for anybody anywhere
Engineers tend to see things big. So much so that they sometimes forget that the biggest impact can often be achieved by seeing things small and simple. This tendency to opt for the big certainly doesn’t hold for Colin Bulthaup, founder of Potenco. The mission of his company is huge: making clean power universally available and immediately useful anywhere and everywhere in the world. His solution is surprisingly small: a pull-cord generator the size of a yoyo that can safely power rechargeable batteries and provide energy for applications such as lighting, cell phones, or water purifiers.
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By Sergio Ferreira / Published on Thu, 2008-03-27 16:08
Electricity is a high quality energy carrier, and its inefficient use needs to be avoided by all means. But more important than the question ‘can we save electricity?’ may be to ask ourselves whether electricity can save energy.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2008-03-13 18:49
But expensive to implement
In recent years, peak summer demand for electricity has been rising more steeply than the average energy demand, especially in sunny countries where air conditioning is becoming standard.
Contrary to what you might expect, electricity generation and retail companies are not pleased with these consumption peaks. With the current pricing model, the cost of providing the marginal peak kWh is often higher than the revenue. Electricity transmission and distribution companies also see a high peak demand as a burden since it requires extra transmission capacity. A high peak demand is also negative from an environmental point of view, because it often requires the use of peak power production units with a poor environmental performance.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Tue, 2008-03-11 23:24
Based on a discussion webinar, Friday 15th February 2008
Two major concerns exist about our electrical power system. The first is the reliability and quality of the electrical power, summarised under the term ‘Power Quality’ (PQ). Poor PQ affects the profitability and productivity of our economy. The second concern is the energy efficiency (EE) of the electrical system. Poor EE affects both the environment and the profitability of the economy.
But how do measures to improve PQ influence the efficiency, and vice versa? Are PQ and EE measures synergetic, or rather counter-productive?
Leonardo ENERGY addressed this subject in a discussion webinar on 15th February 2008. The following are a few of the major points arising from that discussion.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Fri, 2008-02-22 17:00
By Guy Kasier, E&D Systems
This briefing paper presents the findings of the project 'Telemedicine and the consequences for urban planning and development' running from 2003 to 2007 in 4 countries. Its main findings are presented below:
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By Stefan Fassbinder / Published on Mon, 2008-02-11 15:08
These 2 case studies demonstrate that high-quality rewiring of domestic electrical systems in older residential buildings can yield a significant increase in home comfort.
We describe some examples of electrical refurbishment work aimed at illustrating how electricians can tap into this market.
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