Analyze the Effects of COVID-19 on Energy Storage Systems: A Techno-Economic Approach

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. power sector witnessed remarkable electricity demand changes in many geographical regions. These changes were evident in population-dense cities. This paper incorporates a techno-economic analysis of energy storage systems (ESSs) to investigate the pandemic's influence on ESS development. In particular, we employ a linear program-based revenue maximization model to capture the revenues of ESS from participating in the electricity market, by performing arbitrage on the energy trading, and regulation market, by providing regulation services to stabilize the grid's frequency. We consider five dominant energy storage technologies in the U.S., namely, Lithium-ion, Advanced Lead Acid, Flywheel, Vanadium Redox Flow, and Lithium-Iron Phosphate storage technologies. Extensive numerical results conducted on the case of New York City (NYC) allow us to highlight the negative impact that COVID-19 had on the NYC power sector. © 2023 IEEE.

Eco-economics Approach for Non-infectious Medical Waste Emergency Disposal During the COVID-19 Pandemic

After the outbreak of COVID-19, it spread rapidly all over the world. A large number of infected patients have led to a sharp increase in medical waste. This puts great pressure on the medical waste treatment system. The disposal capacity of the system may not be able to meet such a large amount of medical waste, which may lead to delayed treatment of infectious medical waste (IMW) and accumulation of non-infectious medical waste (NMW). Therefore, this paper proposes that it is necessary to classify IMW and NMW, and reconstruct the domestic waste disposal plant to treat NMW to alleviate the pressure of the treatment system. This paper also establishes an eco-economics model to optimize the emergency disposal scheme. The effectiveness of the model is verified by a real case in Wuhan. It is found that the location and carbon emission coefficient of the domestic waste disposal plants are the key factors affecting its selection. At the same time, sufficient budget may lead to waste money. In addition, carbon emission and total cost always change in the opposite trend when the budget changes. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.