Virtual power plant for energy management: Science mapping approach.

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to examine the trends and developments in the field of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) from 2000 to June 2022. The selection and identification of data involved a systematic search resulting in 1245 articles for bibliometric analysis after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Strategic diagrams, overlay graphs, and evolution maps were used to analyze the trends and themes in different periods. The analysis reveals the emergence and evolution of various themes and their interconnections. In the early periods, the focus was on energy market issues, distributed generation, and the control of Distributed Energy Resources. Themes such as microgrids, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and economic analysis have gained prominence over time. The present study also identified the introduction of new concepts such as prosumers, collaborative networks, and dynamic power plants in later periods. The performance analysis for the last period (2022) highlighted the centrality and density of themes such as power plants, renewable power plants, battery energy storage systems, and robust optimization. These themes are considered both fundamental and transverse in the research field. This study discusses the importance of VPPs and battery energy storage systems in addressing grid intermittency issues and providing auxiliary market services. The analysis also emphasized the management of the demand side and the integration of electric vehicles and Building Energy Management Systems in VPPs. Therefore, future directions for VPP research include innovative structures and topologies, big-data analysis, and diversified optimization techniques. This study provides insights into the evolution and current state of research in the field of VPPs and identifies areas for further exploration and development.

Are there synergies in the decarbonization of aviation and shipping? An integrated perspective for the case of Brazil.

Aviation and shipping account for 22% of total transport-related CO2 emissions. Low-carbon fuels (such as biofuels and e-fuels) are the most promising alternatives to deeply decarbonize air and maritime transport. A number of technological routes focused on the production of renewable jet fuel can coproduce marine fuels, emulating the economies of scope of crude oil refineries. This work aims to investigate possible synergies in the decarbonization of aviation and shipping in Brazil, selected as an interesting case study. An Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) of national scope is used to explore different combinations of sectoral and national climate targets. This IAM represents not only the energy supply and transport systems but also the agricultural and land-use systems. In the absence of a deep mitigation policy for Brazil, results indicate synergies related to oilseed- and lignocellulosic-based biofuels production routes. Imposing a strict carbon budget to the Brazilian economy compatible with a world well below 2°C, the portfolio of aviation and shipping fuels changes significantly with the need for carbon dioxide removal strategies based on bioenergy. In such a scenario, synergies between the two sectors still exist, but most renewable marine energy supply is a by-product of synthetic diesel produced for road transport, revealing a synergy different from the one originally investigated by this work.

Model-Driven Impact Quantification of Energy Resource Redundancy and Server Rejuvenation on the Dependability of Medical Sensor Networks in Smart Hospitals.

The spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic across countries all over the world urges governments to revolutionize the traditional medical hospitals/centers to provide sustainable and trustworthy medical services to patients under the pressure of the huge overload on the computing systems of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for medical monitoring as well as treatment services of medical professionals. Uncertain malfunctions in any part of the medical computing infrastructure, from its power system in a remote area to the local computing systems at a smart hospital, can cause critical failures in medical monitoring services, which could lead to a fatal loss of human life in the worst case. Therefore, early design in the medical computing infrastructure's power and computing systems needs to carefully consider the dependability characteristics, including the reliability and availability of the WSNs in smart hospitals under an uncertain outage of any part of the energy resources or failures of computing servers, especially due to software aging. In that regard, we propose reliability and availability models adopting stochastic Petri net (SPN) to quantify the impact of energy resources and server rejuvenation on the dependability of medical sensor networks. Three different availability models (A, B, and C) are developed in accordance with various operational configurations of a smart hospital's computing infrastructure to assimilate the impact of energy resource redundancy and server rejuvenation techniques for high availability. Moreover, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the components that impose the greatest impact on the system availability. The analysis results indicate different impacts of the considered configurations on the WSN's operational availability in smart hospitals, particularly 99.40%, 99.53%, and 99.64% for the configurations A, B, and C, respectively. This result highlights the difference of 21 h of downtime per year when comparing the worst with the best case. This study can help leverage the early design of smart hospitals considering its wireless medical sensor networks' dependability in quality of service to cope with overloading medical services in world-wide virus pandemics.

Planning stand-alone electricity generation systems, a multiple objective optimization and fuzzy decision making approach.

This paper presents a fuzzy-multiple objective optimization methodology to plan stand-alone electricity generation systems. The optimization process considers three main objectives, namely technology cost, environmental and societal impacts. For each feasible solution of the Pareto set, a system reliability index is evaluated along the lifetime of the project. As a key contribution, the decision making process is carried out by applying a fuzzy satisfaction method (FSM). The FSM accounts simultaneously four key performance indexes (KPI): technical, economic, environmental and social. The novelty of the proposal lies on the inclusion of societal impact (local wealth creation) in the FSM used here to select the more appropriate solution. Previous contributions on FSM only accounts two of four indexes considered in this paper. The methodology was applied in a Colombian case study. The results show the importance of the simultaneous consideration of technical, economic, environmental and social objectives in the evaluation of off-grid energization solutions.

Socio-economic and environmental factors influenced pro-poor growth process: new development triangle.

The developmental triangle earlier comprises economic growth, income inequality, and poverty, while in this study, we extended it by incorporating environmental and resource factors, health and education factors, sectoral value added, and some other growth-specific factors for assessing pro-poor growth, by considering Bolivian economy as a case study. The elasticity estimates show that agriculture and industrial sector growth is not pro-poor due to account of high income inequality, while services sector played a vital role in country's economic development and supports poor livelihood in a country. Energy and environmental resources negatively impact on quality of life of the poor relative to non-poor, which create income differences among them. Health and education expenditures give favors to the poor and supported the notion of pro-poor growth, while country's per capita income and foreign direct investment inflows increase income inequality that lead towards pro-rich growth. The results conclude that, in general, Bolivian economy growth is fairly unstable, polluted, and unhealthy that biased to the poor relative to non-poor.

Qualitative evaluation of spatial complementarity between renewable energy resources with complementarity roses.

Energetic complementarity is a subject that has been concentrating more and more attention of the researchers around the world in the last years, a concept that can be applied both in energy planning and in operation of energy systems based on renewable energy resources. Spatial complementarity is the energetic complementarity evaluated between two renewable resources in different locations and, as well as the complementarity evaluated between resources in the same location, has three components: time-complementarity, energy-complementarity and amplitude-complementarity. At the same site, however, complementarity assessment can involve multiple resources simultaneously, and the study of these circumstances requires appropriate tools to handle such information.This method paper describes a method to build complementarity roses expressing the spatial complementarity between two or more renewable energy resources throughout a region, appropriate for the expression of this complementarity through maps.

Relationship between bacterial density and abiotic factors at different sediment depths of lakes in the Upper Paraná River floodplain / Relação entre densidade bacteriana e fatores abióticos em diferentes profundidades do sedimento em lagoas da planície de inundação do Alto Rio Paraná

River-floodplain systems are known for their heterogeneity of habitats and the hydrological pulse, the main driving force, which increases nutrient concentrations at the onset of the flood due to leaching from the littoral region and decomposition. This decaying organic matter tends to be deposited in the sediment, where occur biogeochemical processes associated with microorganisms. This study aimed to characterize the vertical distribution of bacterial density in the sediment strata of six environments of the Upper Paraná River floodplain, checking similarity as for bacterial density and physical and chemical conditions. To this end, we analyzed the following factors: total phosphorus, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, levels of organic and inorganic material, oxidation potential and particle size. The results evidenced a gradient of vertical distribution of bacterial density, with predominance of cocci, which possibly indicates no nutrient limitation in this limnic compartment. The analysis of variance was applied to determine significant differences between the layers of the sediment and environments. It can be observed a tendency of deposition of total-P and MI within the upper layers of all environments. More reducing potentials in the initial layers indicate a higher bacterial activity, since this region possesses a greater availability of most easily decomposable material.

Sistemas rios-planície de inundação são conhecidos pela sua heterogeneidade de habitats e pelo pulso hidrológico, principal função de força atuante, que aumenta as concentrações de nutrientes no início devido à lixiviação da região litorânea e à decomposição. Essa matéria orgânica tende a ser depositada no sedimento, onde ocorrem processos biogeoquímicos associados a microrganismos. O objetivo deste estudo foi caracterizar a distribuição vertical da densidade bacteriana em estratos do sedimento de seis ambientes da planície de inundação do Alto Rio Paraná, verificando a similaridade entre os mesmos em relação à densidade bacteriana e condições físicas e químicas. Foram analisados os seguintes fatores: Fósforo total (P-total), nitrogênio total Kjeldahl (NTK), material orgânico (MO) e inorgânico (MI), potencial oxidativo e granulometria. Os resultados mostraram um gradiente de distribuição vertical da densidade bacteriana, com predomínio da forma cocos, possivelmente indicando que não há limitação de nutrientes nos estratos. Análise multivariada mostrou grupamentos por ambientes, ressaltando a grande heterogeneidade de condições limnológicas e de habitats. Pôde-se observar uma tendência de deposição de P-total e MI nas ultimas camadas de todos os ambientes. Potenciais mais redutores nas camadas iniciais indicam maior atividade bacteriana, visto que nesta região há maior disponibilidade material mais facilmente decomponível.

Relação entre densidade bacteriana e fatores abióticos em diferentes profundidades do sedimento em lagoas da planície de inundação do Alto Rio Paraná / Relationship between bacterial density and abiotic factors at different sediment depths of lakes in the Upper Paraná River floodplain

Sistemas rios-planície de inundação são conhecidos pela sua heterogeneidade de habitats e pelo pulso hidrológico, principal função de força atuante, que aumenta as concentrações de nutrientes no início devido à lixiviação da região litorânea e à decomposição. Essa matéria orgânica tende a ser depositada no sedimento, onde ocorrem processos biogeoquímicos associados a microrganismos. O objetivo deste estudo foi caracterizar a distribuição vertical da densidade bacteriana em estratos do sedimento de seis ambientes da planície de inundação do Alto Rio Paraná, verificando a similaridade entre os mesmos em relação à densidade bacteriana e condições físicas e químicas. Foram analisados os seguintes fatores: Fósforo total (P-total), nitrogênio total Kjeldahl (NTK), material orgânico (MO) e inorgânico (MI), potencial oxidativo e granulometria. Os resultados mostraram um gradiente de distribuição vertical da densidade bacteriana, com predomínio da forma cocos, possivelmente indicando que não há limitação de nutrientes nos estratos. Análise multivariada mostrou grupamentos por ambientes, ressaltando a grande heterogeneidade de condições limnológicas e de habitats. Pôde-se observar uma tendência de deposição de P-total e MI nas ultimas camadas de todos os ambientes. Potenciais mais redutores nas camadas iniciais indicam maior atividade bacteriana, visto que nesta região há maior disponibi(AU)

River-floodplain systems are known for their heterogeneity of habitats and the hydrological pulse, the main driving force, which increases nutrient concentrations at the onset of the flood due to leaching from the littoral region and decomposition. This decaying organic matter tends to be deposited in the sediment, where occur biogeochemical processes associated with microorganisms. This study aimed to characterize the vertical distribution of bacterial density in the sediment strata of six environments of the Upper Paraná River floodplain, checking similarity as for bacterial density and physical and chemical conditions. To this end, we analyzed the following factors: total phosphorus, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, levels of organic and inorganic material, oxidation potential and particle size. The results evidenced a gradient of vertical distribution of bacterial density, with predominance of cocci, which possibly indicates no nutrient limitation in this limnic compartment. The analysis of variance was applied to determine significant differences between the layers of the sediment and environments. It can be observed a tendency of deposition of total-P and MI within the upper layers of all environments. More reducing potentials in the initial layers indicate a higher bacterial activity, since this region possesses a greater availability of most easily decomposable material.(AU)