• Energy Research

[EN] The massive implementation of distributed energy resources based on biofuels requires a complex methodology to assess the optimal energy valorization options and economic feasibility. This paper has focused on producing pellets for boilers. The work focuses on the residential and commercial sectors. To consume local biomass, it must be considered the availability of potential customers, biomass availability, properties, and dispersion to evaluate transport cost. The developed methodology was applied to three different counties of the Valencian Community (typical of Mediterranean areas). Biomass resources for different counties have been quantified and characterized regarding key issues as heating value and ash content. Considering every evaluated area (the typical total area in the range 600 to 1800 km2) as a biomass management unit, the impact of pellet production plant size and biomass transport costs for three different counties was evaluated. However, different balances between biomass resources availability and self-consumption potentials are obtained, the economic feasibility of pellet plants was acceptable in the three cases with payback periods from 5 to 6 years.

[EN] The massive implementation of distributed energy resources based on biofuels requires a complex methodology to assess the optimal energy valorization options and economic feasibility. This paper has focused on producing pellets for boilers. The work focuses on the residential and commercial sectors. To consume local biomass, it must be considered the availability of potential customers, biomass availability, properties, and dispersion to evaluate transport cost. The developed methodology was applied to three different counties of the Valencian Community (typical of Mediterranean areas). Biomass resources for different counties have been quantified and characterized regarding key issues as heating value and ash content. Considering every evaluated area (the typical total area in the range 600 to 1800 km2) as a biomass management unit, the impact of pellet production plant size and biomass transport costs for three different counties was evaluated. However, different balances between biomass resources availability and self-consumption potentials are obtained, the economic feasibility of pellet plants was acceptable in the three cases with payback periods from 5 to 6 years.

[EN] The transport sector is answerable for around a quarter of the global CO2 emissions sent into the atmosphere, and 50% of the greenhouse gases in the cities. Considering a staggered introduction of renewable sources in the electricity mix, the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in the urban transport network arises as a necessary environmental solution. However, their integration is facing a wide range of barriers, many of them only qualitatively known, or uncertain. This paper presents a multicriteria methodology to assess such obstacles to the electrification of urban transport of Mediterranean flat medium cities. This analysis considers context analysis, literature review, and the application of the Multi Criteria Decision Making Method: Analytic Network Process, with the aid of a panel of experts representing quadruple helix involvement (Government, Business, Society and Academia). As a case study, the city of Valencia (Spain) was chosen, which has been in a deep transition of mobility in recent decades. Results revealed that the most influential barriers turned out to be the insufficient subsidies for EVs' development, the battery autonomy power and the CapEx of batteries. Moreover, private passenger transport followed by freight transport ranked as the most affected urban transport alternatives. We really appreciate the help of our ten experts in the field. Without them, we could not have carried out the research. There was no familiarity bias/conflict of interest with them. This work was supported in part by the Spanish Public Administration "Ministerio de Universidades" under the grant Margarita Salas-Universitat Polite`cnica de Vale`ncia (MS/19) , funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU.

[EN] The transport sector is answerable for around a quarter of the global CO2 emissions sent into the atmosphere, and 50% of the greenhouse gases in the cities. Considering a staggered introduction of renewable sources in the electricity mix, the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in the urban transport network arises as a necessary environmental solution. However, their integration is facing a wide range of barriers, many of them only qualitatively known, or uncertain. This paper presents a multicriteria methodology to assess such obstacles to the electrification of urban transport of Mediterranean flat medium cities. This analysis considers context analysis, literature review, and the application of the Multi Criteria Decision Making Method: Analytic Network Process, with the aid of a panel of experts representing quadruple helix involvement (Government, Business, Society and Academia). As a case study, the city of Valencia (Spain) was chosen, which has been in a deep transition of mobility in recent decades. Results revealed that the most influential barriers turned out to be the insufficient subsidies for EVs' development, the battery autonomy power and the CapEx of batteries. Moreover, private passenger transport followed by freight transport ranked as the most affected urban transport alternatives. We really appreciate the help of our ten experts in the field. Without them, we could not have carried out the research. There was no familiarity bias/conflict of interest with them. This work was supported in part by the Spanish Public Administration "Ministerio de Universidades" under the grant Margarita Salas-Universitat Polite`cnica de Vale`ncia (MS/19) , funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU.

[EN] A residential load management system equips smart meters (SMs) to measure load utilization at residencies. SM reports electricity usage based on electronic appliances. In this paper, a smart residential load management system is designed by three-fold along with the provisioning of consumer security. Load management encompasses load categorizing by Hopfield neural network, fuzzy-logic based bill payments identification and load state prediction using Markov chain. Residential load is based on three classes: active load, affordable load and inactive load. The estimation of residential load ensures to manage the load at residency either to turn off the load or intimate excess consumption of electricity. The registered consumers of a specific residency are enabled to receive load status by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. SMs at residencies periodically compute the electricity manipulation and those readings are encrypted using hybrid blowfish and elliptic curve cryptography algorithm with considering the behavior information from IoT device and partial key storage assists security, even if the device is theft. This smart residential security assisted load management (SRS-LM) system is developed in network simulator 3 and the results showed improvements in terms of power usage, load power, peak load reduction, total power consumption, power cost and computation time This work was Supported by National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) through the pH.D. scholarship 705018. The authors would like to thank the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, for all the collaboration and realization of this paper

[EN] A residential load management system equips smart meters (SMs) to measure load utilization at residencies. SM reports electricity usage based on electronic appliances. In this paper, a smart residential load management system is designed by three-fold along with the provisioning of consumer security. Load management encompasses load categorizing by Hopfield neural network, fuzzy-logic based bill payments identification and load state prediction using Markov chain. Residential load is based on three classes: active load, affordable load and inactive load. The estimation of residential load ensures to manage the load at residency either to turn off the load or intimate excess consumption of electricity. The registered consumers of a specific residency are enabled to receive load status by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. SMs at residencies periodically compute the electricity manipulation and those readings are encrypted using hybrid blowfish and elliptic curve cryptography algorithm with considering the behavior information from IoT device and partial key storage assists security, even if the device is theft. This smart residential security assisted load management (SRS-LM) system is developed in network simulator 3 and the results showed improvements in terms of power usage, load power, peak load reduction, total power consumption, power cost and computation time This work was Supported by National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) through the pH.D. scholarship 705018. The authors would like to thank the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, for all the collaboration and realization of this paper

[EN] Energy supply is essential for the development of any society and search for energy sustainability is a must with poverty reduction and environmental sustainability as the two challenges to consider for any energy scenario. Meanwhile environmental damage receives predominant attention in the energy sustainability analysis, a lack of attention exists to others, such as external dependence for energy supply or availability of enough energy for people. However, these factors also compromise the sustainability of the assumed policies. An analysis considering these three factors has been developed and applied to countries in the Mediterranean area by considering two well-defined zones: the North side with an adequate level of energy consumption, but with excessive CO2 emissions and high external dependence on energy supply; and, by the contrary, the Middle East and North African countries, with a deficit in energy supply, but without problems in CO2 emissions and external energy supply. Results show a requirement of a 100% renewable scenario for the countries in the North area, while those in the MENA need to increase drastically their energy demand with a significant contribution from renewable sources. Assuming a global scenario for the entire area, energy sustainability could be reached with less demanding requirements. This work was partly supported in part by the Spanish Public Administration "Ministerio de Universidades" under the grant Margarita Salas-Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU.

[EN] Energy supply is essential for the development of any society and search for energy sustainability is a must with poverty reduction and environmental sustainability as the two challenges to consider for any energy scenario. Meanwhile environmental damage receives predominant attention in the energy sustainability analysis, a lack of attention exists to others, such as external dependence for energy supply or availability of enough energy for people. However, these factors also compromise the sustainability of the assumed policies. An analysis considering these three factors has been developed and applied to countries in the Mediterranean area by considering two well-defined zones: the North side with an adequate level of energy consumption, but with excessive CO2 emissions and high external dependence on energy supply; and, by the contrary, the Middle East and North African countries, with a deficit in energy supply, but without problems in CO2 emissions and external energy supply. Results show a requirement of a 100% renewable scenario for the countries in the North area, while those in the MENA need to increase drastically their energy demand with a significant contribution from renewable sources. Assuming a global scenario for the entire area, energy sustainability could be reached with less demanding requirements. This work was partly supported in part by the Spanish Public Administration "Ministerio de Universidades" under the grant Margarita Salas-Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU.