• Energy Research

Access to cheap, clean energy has a significant impact on a country’s ability to develop sustainably. Fossil fuels have a major impact on global warming and are currently becoming less and less profitable when used to generate power. In order to replace the diesel generators that are connected to the university of Debre Markos’ electrical distribution network with hybrid renewable energy sources, this study presents optimization and techno-economic feasibility analyses of proposed hybrid renewable systems and their overall cost impact in stand-alone and grid-connected modes of operation. Metaheuristic optimization techniques such as enhanced whale optimization algorithm (EWOA), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), and African vultures’ optimization algorithm (AVOA) are used for the optimal sizing of the hybrid renewable energy sources according to financial and reliability evaluation parameters. After developing a MATLAB program to size hybrid systems, the total current cost (TCC) was calculated using the aforementioned metaheuristic optimization techniques (i.e., EWOA, WOA, and AVOA). In the grid-connected mode of operation, the TCC was 4.507 × 106 EUR, 4.515 × 106 EUR, and 4.538 × 106 EUR, respectively, whereas in stand-alone mode, the TCC was 4.817 × 106 EUR, 4.868 × 106 EUR, and 4.885 × 106 EUR, respectively. In the grid-connected mode of operation, EWOA outcomes lowered the TCC by 0.18% using WOA and 0.69% using AVOA, and by 1.05% using WOA and 1.39% using AVOA in stand-alone operational mode. In addition, when compared with different financial evaluation parameters such as net present cost (NPC) (EUR), cost of energy (COE) (EUR/kWh), and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) (EUR/kWh), and reliability parameters such as expected energy not supplied (EENS), loss of power supply probability (LPSP), reliability index (IR), loss of load probability (LOLP), and loss of load expectation (LOLE), EWOA efficiently reduced the overall current cost while fulfilling the constraints imposed by the objective function. According to the result comparison, EWOA outperformed the competition in terms of total current costs with reliability improvements.

Innovation plays a pivotal role in the progress and goodwill of an organization, and its ability to thrive. Consequently, the impact analysis of innovation on the performance of an organization holds great importance. This paper presents a two-stage analytical framework to examine the impact of business innovation on a firm’s performance, especially firms from the manufacturing sector. The prime objective is to identify the factors that have an impact on firm-level innovation, and to examine the impact of firm-level innovation on business performance. The framework and its analysis are based on the latest World Bank enterprise survey, with a sample size of 696 manufacturing firms. The first stage of the proposed framework establishes the analytical results through Bivariate Probit, which indicates that research and development (R&D) has a significantly positive impact on the product, process, marketing, and organizational innovations. It thus highlights the important role of the allocation of lump-sum amounts for R&D activities. The statistical analysis shows that innovation does not depend on the size of the firms. Moreover, the older firms are found to be wiser at conducting R&D than newer firms that are reluctant to take risks. The second stage of the proposed framework separately analyzes the impacts of the product and organizational innovation, and the process and marketing innovation on the firm performance, and finds them to be statistically significant and insignificant, respectively.

This research paper aims to examine the impact of innovative HRM practices, including employee participation, performance appraisal, reward and compensation, recruitment and selection, and redeployment–retraining on firm performance. For this purpose, four different models are utilized to examine the impact of innovative HRM department practices on the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a country. The dependent variable, firm performance, is proxified by different variables such as labor productivity, product innovation, process innovation, and marketing innovation. For empirical analysis, primary data are collected using a questionnaire. Estimation is conducted using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logit regression techniques. The estimated results indicate that most innovative HRM practices have a statistically significant impact on firm performance in terms of labor productivity, product, process, and marketing innovations. These results imply that SMEs in a country may observe the benefits of devoting greater attention to innovative HRM practices to achieve their future growth potential.