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Although considered a current highlight, the concept of intelligent buildings (IB) has not been adopted as quickly and widely as expected. One of the reasons for this is the lack of information and knowledge support to all professionals involved at the design stage of a project. This paper provides a brief overview on the new advances of IB technologies and discusses ways of supplementing the decision making process by adopting two methods for economical and technical aspects of IB applications. It goes on to introduce an on-going research which aims to utilise knowledge based systems to provide comprehensive evaluations to alternatives and decision support to retrofit building projects, when they are being conceptualised.

Access to a reliable source of electricity is a basic need for any community as it can improve the living standards characterized via the improvement of healthcare, education, and the local economy at large. There are two key factors to consider when assessing the appropriateness of a micro-grid system, the cost-effectiveness of the system and the quality of service. The tradeoff between cost and reliability of the system is a major compromise in designing hybrid systems. In this way, optimization of a Hybrid Micro-Grid System (HMGS) is investigated. A hybrid wind/PV system with battery storage and diesel generator is used for this purpose. The power management algorithm is applied to the load, and the Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) method is used to find the best configuration of the system and for sizing the components. A set of recent hourly wind speed data from three meteorological stations in Iran, namely: Nahavand, Rafsanjan, and Khash, are selected and tested for the optimization of HMGS. Despite design complexity of the aforementioned systems, the results show that the MOPSO optimization model produces appropriate sizing of the components for each location. It is also suggested that the use of HMGS can be considered as a good alternative to promote electrification projects and enhance energy access within remote Iranian areas or other developing countries enjoying the same or similar climatic conditions.

Abstract Generation is most valuable when demand is highest. As electricity can't yet be cheaply stored, generation and transmission infrastructure must be built to meet the highest expected demand, plus a margin of error. Reliably producing power at times of critical demand not only offsets the need to use expensive liquid fuels such as diesel or condensate, but also removes the need to build backup power stations and transmission infrastructure that would only be used for a small fraction of the year. Under the most extreme demand conditions, solar has reduced the peak demand seen by retailers and wholesale energy markets. This study compares the capital cost of critical peak availability from gas turbines to the capital cost of critical peak availability from distributed solar in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). When compared on this basis, 10–22% of the cost of installing the solar system can be attributed to the capital value of critical peak generation. North–west and west facing PV is worth a further 3–6% of system installation costs when compared to generally north facing PV. Finally, southern states, with longer summer days and more sunshine in the afternoon are found to benefit more from peak supply of solar PV.

This paper describes the influences which govern solar box cookers: HS 7534, HS 7033 and the newest design HS 5521. The best of solar cooker, type HS 7033 gave oven temperature of 202°C between 12:00 and 12:45 p.m. on October 7, 1997. Thirty-four units of this type have been field tested since September 1997. It was found that these solar cookers have a good heat storage capability, therefore they can be used for consecutive cooking. The optimization of the size, the aperture area, the insulator thickness, the oven volume and the reflector area leads to a new design, type HS 5521. Its volume is only 35% of the volume of HS 7033 and cheaper. The performance comparison of the last two solar cookers are described based on the data collected during testing with and without load. The HS 5521 has the same heat collection rate and is able to cook as fast as HS 7033. The performance of three types of solar cookers available in Indonesia was analyzed and compared. Field tests demonstrated that type HS 7033 feature good heat storage capability and can be used for consecutive cooking. Type HS 5521 was designed on the basis of size, aperture area, insulator thickness, oven volume, and reflector area optimization of HS 7033 specifications. The new design has a volume only 35% that of HS 7033 and is less expensive to construct and operate. HS 5521 also has the same heat collection rate and can cook as fast as HS 7033. (from World Renewable Energy Conf Proceedings, Perth, Australia, Feb 99).

The conversion of biogas to biomethane represents an attractive solution to replace fossil gas with a renewable gas. However, removal of such a large percentage of CO2 from a fuel gas comes at a significant energy cost using the conventional CO2 capture technologies and hence has led to an opportunity to develop an alternative technique for large-scale carbon capture. Results of the current study suggest that employing an anion exchange membrane (AEM)-based alkaline water electrolyser for CO2 removal from gas mixtures offers an energy-efficient strategy for the capture and removal of CO2 from biogas. After capturing CO2 in an aqueous absorption column, the resulting bicarbonate solution was fed through the cathode of an AEM-based electrolyser. Although the CO2 absorption rate increased from about 300 to 900 mol m−3 h−1 when the pH was elevated from 9 to 13, the system's energy requirement was lowest at pH = 9. The economic assessment shows that the electrochemical work requirement for CO2 removal from biogas using the AEM-based alkaline electrolyser ranges between 0.25 and 0.92 kWh/kg CO2 at optimum conditions (pH = 9). This could potentially reduce the energy input for CO2 removal by about 50% compared to commercially available biogas upgrading technologies.

Abstract This paper argues that “sustainablity” will remain a peripheral architectural issue until it forms part of a contemporary architectural paradigm. The paper explores a number of approaches for relating energy and environment to the central architectural issues of form and space making.

Abstract This paper presents optimal sizing algorithms of grid-connected photovoltaic-battery system for residential houses. The objective is to minimize the total annual cost of electricity. The proposed methodology is based on a genetic algorithm involving a time series simulation of the entire system and is validated using data collected through one year. Genetic algorithm jointly optimises the sizes of the photovoltaic and the battery systems by adjusting the battery charge and discharge cycles according to the availability of solar resource and a time-of-use tariff structure for electricity. Houses without pre-existing solar systems are considered. The results show that jointly optimizing the sizing of battery and photovoltaic systems can significantly reduce electricity imports and the cost of electricity for the household. However, the optimal capacity of such photovoltaic battery varies strongly with the electricity consumption profile of the household, and is also affected by electricity and battery prices. Besides individual PV generation and battery storage for each house, this paper also investigates group battery optimizations for communities with different consumption levels or with different energy demand diversity to see their effects on optimal sizing and peak demands for aggregated PV-battery system.