• Energy Research
• 2016-2025close
• CN close
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• Ural Federal University close

Enhancing the reliability of energy networks and minimizing downtime is crucial, making self-healing smart grids indispensable for ensuring a continuous power supply and fortifying resilience. As smart grids increasingly incorporate decentralized prosumers, innovative coordination strategies are essential to fully exploit their potential and improve system self-healing capabilities. To address this need, this paper presents a novel bi-level strategy for managing the self-healing process within a smart grid influenced by Hydrogen Refueling Stations (HRSs), Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCSs), and energy hubs. This approach taps into the combined potential of these prosumers to boost system self-healing speed and reliability. In the initial stage, the Smart Grid Operator (SGO) conducts self-healing planning during emergencies, communicating required nodal capacities to prevent forced load shedding and outlining incentives for smart prosumers. Subsequently, prosumers schedule their activities and contribute flexible capacities to the SGO. Bridging the first and second stages, an adaptive Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) algorithm ensures convergence between the SGO and prosumer schedules within a decentralized framework. This strategy underwent implementation on a 118-node distribution system using GAMS. Results demonstrate that the proposed concept reduces Forced Load Shedding (FLS) by 32.04% and self-healing costs by 17.48% through effective utilization of smart prosumers' flexible capacities. Furthermore, outcomes indicate that the SGO reduces FLS by 6.69% by deploying Mobile Electrical Energy Storages (MEESs) and Mobile Fuel Cell Trucks (MFCTs) to critical nodes. This research has benefited from the funding of the program Strategic projects oriented to the ecological transition and digital transition with NextGenerationEU/PRTR funds of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Research Agency (project ‘‘Local markets for energy communities: designing efficient markets and assessing the integration from the electricity system perspective (OptiREC)’’, with reference number TED2021-131365B-C43. The research has also supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Universities of Anhui Province (KJ2020A0009)

Russia is known to be a country with enormous energy resources both renewables and non-renewables. Much of the country’s effort towards energy generation has been on the development of the non-renewables over the years. This study examined the opportunities and challenges in Russia’s Renewable energy (RE) sector. By coupling both interviews and literature reviews, a total of 8 main opportunities and 7 key challenges were identified and discussed. The Best–Worst-Method was used to assign weights to the various factors using inputs of 30 experienced experts in Russia’s RE sector. According to the obtained results, the most significant opportunity that the country would have to take advantage of is the opportunity to export RE outside the shores of the country, it recorded 27.7 percent. This is followed by the country’s target for the RE sector which scored 18%, hydrogen production and need to meet local energy requirements followed with 12% each. The greatest challenge which also serve as a hindrance to the development of RE in the country is the low attention given to clean technologies from government, it recorded a weight of 31.4%. This is followed by unequal playing field, and strict local content requirements which recorded 17.9% and 13.5%, respectively. The study ended with some strategic recommendations to authorities for the development of the sector.

Marine renewable energy is regarded as a nascent renewable energy resource that is less utilized due to a number of challenges in the sector. This paper focused on using both traditional and bibliometric analysis approaches to review the marine energy industry. It also assessed the various opportunities and challenges in the sector beyond technological challenges using PESTEL analysis. The results from the study identified the availability of renewable energy targets, international and national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets, job creation, skill transfer from offshore industries, renewable support, and low GHG emissions as the major opportunities for the sector. The challenges in the sector include the lack of commonality in device designs, high initial capital costs, lack of appropriate legal and regulatory frameworks, lack of funding, fragmentations in regulatory institutions, bad macro-economic indicators in some countries, environmental challenges, the survivability of the various technologies in the harsh oceanic environment, and strong competition from other renewable energy sources. The outcome of the bibliometric analysis spanning from 2013 to 2023 shows that tidal power is the focus of research in the field, and most studies are either focused on ways to improve its efficiency in terms of technology or on the identification of resource potentials for the siting of the various marine renewable power systems. Recommendations such as strong cooperation between the government and private sector, increased public education, collaboration with existing players in the marine sector, and increased research and development, among others, were proposed for the development of the sector.

This study assesses environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis corroborating the role of scale, composite, and technology effects in OECD countries. To this end, we analyze the panel time series data from 1980 to 2017 using cross-sectional-autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL). We document that economic growth and carbon emissions follow a U-shaped relationship, contrary to the EKC hypothesis, which our analysis attributes to the substantial contributions of the industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors to GDP. Technological progress has a somewhat marginal impact in reducing carbon emissions through energy efficiency but is unable to validate the existence of EKC hypothesis.

The target of the current study was to review and analyze the research activities of previous studies on cooling techniques for thermal photovoltaic (PV) systems using phase-change materials. These materials have the ability to absorb and release certain amounts of potential heat energy by changing their state from phase to phase (solid–liquid) within a small temperature range. These materials have been used to regulate and lower the temperature, increase the efficiency, and extend the life of solar cells. A host of improvements have been made to phase-changing materials through the combined utilization of phase-change materials and fins in addition to nanoscale fluids to enhance electrical efficiency. When using PCMs, the thermal, electrical, and overall efficiency improved by 26.87%, 17.33%, and 40.59%, respectively. The addition of nanomaterials increased phase-change materials’ specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity, thus reducing the plate temperature and increasing the electrical efficiency. It was found that using of nanoparticles together with a microcapsule had better performance in terms of energy efficiency. Studies indicated that variable phase materials were not used because of their high cost and lack of stable operational design. Therefore, the effect of phase-change materials on PV/thermal (PVT) system performance needs further investigation and study.