Analysis of the energy demand of the Chilean mining industry and its coverage with solar thermal technologies

The mining industry represents more than half of Chile’s foreign exchange earnings and its increasing expansion will demand a continuous development of its energy supplies. Mostly, all the mines in Chile are located in the desert regions, having a large surface with one of the highest solar radiations levels and clearest skies in the world. Covering the mining industry’s energy demand with solar energy is thus an obvious and promising approach. In this paper, the implementation of solar thermal heating is studied in every mining process and the solar thermal electricity generation for the entire mine demand is considered as well. The work concludes that the installation of flat plate collectors to heat water for mine processes, especially for electrowinning, is strongly recommended. Additionally, the installation of solar thermal power plants can satisfy the mining electricity demand.     

Sustainable energy generation using hybrid energy system for remote hilly rural area in India

Hybrid energy systems are renewable energy system combined in a complementary fashion to ensure dependable power supply at competitive cost. Diesel generators (DGs) are also added here as a back-up source of supply. For remote areas far from a transmission grid, these systems can provide a reliable and cost-effective supply. Addition of DG could instigate environmental pollution in such remote unpolluted areas. In the present work, optimal sizing of hybrid energy system has been attempted for a remote village cluster of Uttarakhand (India) to make available desired power supply at minimum environmental effluence. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electrical Renewable (HOMER) software from National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA has been employed to attain the objective. The software offered several feasible systems, ranked on the basis of net present cost (NPC). All such systems are further analysed for emissions they have made in the environment. Hence, the optimal system fulfilling the criteria of minimal environmental degradation with sufficiently minimum NPC has been searched for. In the present work, the most appropriate system offered on the basis of NPC is the one which has five wind turbines (10 kW each), one DG (65 kW) and 25 batteries (6 V, 6.94 kW h each). The NPC of the system is $1,252,018, whereas its initial capital cost and levelised cost of energy (COE) are $94,233 and $0.292/kW h, respectively. After further analysis of all the feasible systems on the basis of environmental effluence, the most feasible system explored is the one which has minimal emissions of various pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide. The system has been obtained on a compromised NPC of $1,270,921 with a capital cost of $148,133 and COE of $0.296/kW h. Components of the system include five wind turbines (10 kW), a 9 kW PV panel and a 65 kW DG along with 30 batteries (6 V, 6.94 kW h each). The system so obtained would prove to be a feasible, optimally sized and sustainable power supply alternative for remote unelectrified hilly rural area.     

Viability of solar photovoltaics as an electricity generation source for Jordan

Viability of solar photovoltaics as an electricity generation source for Jordan was assessed utilising a proposed 5 MW grid‐connected solar photovoltaic power plant. Long‐term (1994–2003) monthly average daily global solar radiation and sunshine duration data for 24 locations – distributed all over the country – were studied and analysed to assess the distribution of radiation and sunshine duration over Jordan, and formed an input to the RetScreen Software for evaluation and analysis of the proposed plant's electricity production and economic feasibility. It was found that depending on the geographical location, the global solar radiation on horizontal surface varied between 1.51 and 2.46 MWh/m²/year with an overall mean value of 2.01 MWh/m²/year for Jordan. The sunshine duration was found to vary, according to the location, between 8.47 and 9.68 hours/day, with a mean value of 9.07 hours/day and about 3311 sunshine hours annually for Jordan. The annual electricity production of the proposed plant varied depending on the location between 6.886 and 11.919 GWh/year, with a mean value of 9.46 GWh/year. The specific yield varied between 340.9 and 196.9 kWh/m², while the mean value was 270.59 kWh/m². Analysis of the annual electricity production of the plant, the specific yield, besides the economic indicators, i.e. internal rate of return, simple payback period, years to positive cash flow, net present value, annual life cycle saving, benefit/cost ratio, and cost of energy – for all sites – showed that Tafila and Karak are the most suitable sites for the solar photovoltaic power plant's development and Wadi Yabis is the worst. The results also showed that an average of 7414.9 tons of greenhouse gases can be avoided annually utilising the proposed plant for electricity generation at any part of Jordan.     

Efficient energy management strategies for hybrid electric vehicles using shuffled frog-leaping algorithm

This paper proposes two novel approaches for the problem of energy management in hybrid electric vehicles. Shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) is a recently proposed population-based optimization algorithm. This paper first formulates energy management as an optimization problem and optimizes the problem using SFLA. Then the paper makes use of SFLA as a training algorithm to train artificial neural network (ANN) and this SFLA-trained ANN is used for energy management. Interestingly, the proposed approaches of this paper are found to be robust and more efficient than contemporary approaches.     

Solid-state controller for an IAG-based stand-alone wind energy conversion system

This paper deals with an implementation of voltage and frequency controller (VFC) for isolated asynchronous generator-based three-phase autonomous wind energy conversion system. The focus of the proposed work is to provide a feasible solution for rural communities to serve their electricity needs. The least mean square algorithm is used for the extraction of active and reactive power components of the load currents. A three-leg voltage-sourced converter with a battery energy storage system is used as a VFC. The control algorithm is implemented using a digital signal processor. The steady-state and dynamic performances of VFC are demonstrated through test results under static and dynamic loads.     

Experimental investigation into different selectively coated receivers and silver-coated selective surface compound parabolic reflector using regression modelling for industrial heating

The paper explores the experimental results of the prototype compound parabolic trough made of mild steel and silver-coated selective surface. This prototype has been tested with top cover. The performance of the collector has been evaluated with two kinds of receivers coated with three types of black coatings. First receiver is of copper coated with black copper, second receiver is of mild steel coated with black copper and third receiver is of copper coated with black zinc. From actual field experiments, it has been observed that the efficiency of the system achieved with copper receiver coated with black copper is comparatively higher than the other two types of receivers. A simple regression analysis is used to correlate the thermal performance parameters of the system.