Sep 2013, Volume 7 Issue 3
    

  • Select all
  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Fatima BABAA, Abdelmalek KHEZZAR, Mohamed el kamel OUMAAMAR

    A transient model for an induction machine with stator winding turn faults on a single phase is derived using reference frame transformation theory. The negative sequence component and the 3rd harmonic are often considered as accurate indicators. However, small unbalance in the supply voltage and/or in the machine structure that exists in any real system engenders the same harmonics components. In this case, it is too difficult to distinguish between the current harmonics due to the supply voltage and those originated by inter-turn short-circuit faults. For that, to have the correct diagnosis and to increase the sensitivity and the reliability of the diagnostic system, it is crucial to provide the relationship between the inter-turn short-circuits in the stator winding and the supply voltage imbalance through an accurate mathematical model and via a series of experimental essays.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Srinivasan CHANDRASEKARAN, Arunachalam AMARKARTHIK, Karuppan SIVAKUMAR, Dhanasekaran SELVAMUTHUKUMARAN, Shaji SIDNEY

    To convert wave energy into usable forms of energy by utilizing heaving body, heaving bodies (buoys) which are buoyant in nature and float on the water surface are usually used. The wave exerts excess buoyancy force on the buoy, lifting it during the approach of wave crest while the gravity pulls it down during the wave trough. A hydraulic, direct or mechanical power takeoff is used to convert this up and down motion of the buoy to produce usable forms of energy. Though using a floating buoy for harnessing wave energy is conventional, this device faces many challenges in improving the overall conversion efficiency and survivability in extreme conditions. Up to the present, no studies have been done to harness ocean waves using a non-floating object and to find out the merits and demerits of the system. In the present paper, an innovative heaving body type of wave energy converter with a non-floating object was proposed to harness waves. It was also shown that the conversion efficiency and safety of the proposed device were significantly higher than any other device proposed with floating buoy. To demonstrate the improvements, experiments were conducted with non-floating body for different dimensions and the heave response was noted. Power generation was not considered in the experiment to observe the worst case response of the heaving body. The device was modeled in artificial neural network (ANN), the heave response for various parameters were predicted, and compared with the experimental results. It was found that the ANN model could predict the heave response with an accuracy of 99%.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Ashok Jayawant Rao KECHE, Gaddale AMBA PRASAD RAO

    Energy conversion systems based on biomass are particularly interesting because biomass utilization effectively closes the carbon cycle besides achieving self-sustainability. Biomass is particularly useful for highly populated and agriculture dependent economic nations like China and India. A compact and cost effective downdraft gasification system was developed. The present paper describes an experimental investigation on a biomass based gasifier engine system with a capacity of 35 kVA for power generation application. The problem of cooling and cleaning the hot and dirty gas from the gasifier has been satisfactorily solved by the effective cooling and filtration system. The gasifier developed is observed to be operation friendly. The quality of gas was evaluated in terms of its composition, conversion efficiency and total particulate matter. The maximum output of the power plant was obtained at the combustion zone temperature of 850oC. The experimental investigations showed that the percentage reduction in total particulate matter is 89.32%. The conversion efficiency of the biomass gasifier is found to be dependent on the operation conditions and fuel properties of the gasifier. The optimum value of equivalence ratio was observed to be 0.3134 for achieving the maximum gas conversion efficiency of the present gasifier configuration.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Balasubramaniyan SARAVANAN, Surbhi SIKRI, K. S. SWARUP, D. P. KOTHARI

    In the present electricity market, where renewable energy power plants have been included in the power systems, there is a lot of unpredictability in the demand and generation. There are many conventional and evolutionary programming techniques used for solving the unit commitment (UC) problem. Dynamic programming (DP) is a conventional algorithm used to solve the deterministic problem. In this paper DP is used to solve the stochastic model of UC problem. The stochastic modeling for load and generation side has been formulated using an approximate state decision approach. The programs were developed in a MATLAB environment and were extensively tested for a four-unit eight-hour system. The results obtained from these techniques were validated with the available literature and outcome was good. The commitment is in such a way that the total cost is minimal. The novelty of this paper lies in the fact that DP is used for solving the stochastic UC problem.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Houda BRAHMI, Rachid DHIFAOUI

    This paper presents a mathematical model of photovoltaic (PV) module and gives a strategy to calculate online the maximum power point (MPP). The variation of series and shunt resistor are taken into account in the model and are dynamically identified using the Newton-Raphson algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by laboratory experiments obtained by implementing the model on the dSPACE DS1104 board.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Hua CHEN, Xiaolin WANG

    The zone model has been widely applied in control analysis of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to achieve a high building efficiency. This paper proposed a modified zone model which is much simpler in the HVAC system simulation and has the similar accuracy to the complicated simulation model. The proposed model took into consideration the effect of envelop heat reservoir on the room indoor temperature by introducing the thermal admittance of the inner surfaces of the building enclosure. The thermal admittance for the building enclosure was developed based on the building thermal network analytical theory and transfer function method. The efficacy of the proposed model was demonstrated by comparing it with the complicated model — heat balance method (HTB2 program). The predicted results from the proposed model well agreed with those from the complicated simulation. The proposed model can then make the HVAC system dynamic simulation much faster and more acceptable for control design due to its simplicity and efficiency.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Hicham SERHOUD, Djilani BENATTOUS

    In this paper, based on the analysis of the mathematical model in a common synchronous reference frame of the brushless doubly-fed generator (BDFG), the grid connection strategy and maximum energy extraction control were both analyzed. Besides, the transient simulation of no-load model and generation model of the BDFG have been developed on the MATLAB/Simulink platform. The test results during cutting-in grid confirmed the good dynamic performance of grid synchronization and effective power control approach for the BDFG-based variable speed wind turbines.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Dingding TONG, Jing ZHAO

    The energy consumption of campus buildings has specific characteristics, because of the concentrated distribution of people’s working time and locations that change in line with distinct seasonal features. The traditional energy system design and operation for campus buildings is only based on the constant room temperature, such as 25°C in summer and 18°C in winter in China, not taking into consideration the real heating or cooling load characteristics of campus buildings with different functions during the whole day and whole year, which usually results in a lot of energy waste. This paper proposes to set different set-point temperatures in different operation stages of public and residential campus buildings to reduce the heating and cooling design load for energy station and total campus energy consumption for annual operation. Taking a campus under construction in Tianjin, China as an example, two kinds of single building models were established as the typical public building and residential building models on the campus. Besides, the models were simulated at both set-point room temperature and constant room temperature respectively. The comparison of the simulation results showed that the single building energy saving method of the peak load clipping could be used for further analysis of the annual energy consumption of campus building groups. The results proved that the strategy of set-point temperature optimization could efficiently reduce the design load and energy consumption of campus building groups.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Ke ZHANG, Neng ZHU

    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the energy consumption (EC) and find out the determining factors of energy-efficient office building cases according to specific case studies in typical cities of different climate zones in China. The investigated building cases were located in four cities (Beijing, Ningbo, Nanjing and Shenzhen) of three architecture thermotechnical design zones (cold zone, hot summer and cold winter zone, hot summer and warm winter zone). The analysis indicates that the energy consumption index (ECI) of these four cases ranges from 41.06 to 74.23 kW·h/(m2·a). Besides, the outdoor climate can change the EC of air conditioning/heating systems, and further determine the monthly volatility of the total EC of the whole building.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Chunlong LIU, Qunyi ZHU, Zhengqi LI, Qiudong ZONG, Xiang ZHANG, Zhichao CHEN

    To reduce oil consumption during firing-up and partial-load operation, a tiny-oil ignition burner has been recommended. Through reacting-flow experiments performed on a full-scale experimental setup, the influence of different oil flow rates on bituminous coal combustion as well as flow rates without coal feed was analyzed. The ignition burner is identical to that normally used in an 800 MWe utility boiler. Under operating conditions with flow rates of 50, 100, and 150 kg/h, gas temperature distributions were measured in the burner. At the equivalent measuring points at the exits of the first and second combustion chambers, these distributions remained almost unchanged under a constant coal feed rate of 4 t/h. However on the burner centerline, distributions increased slightly with increasing flow rate. Different gas concentrations were measured at the center of the burner exit. For instance, the O2 concentration at the burner exit varied from 0.01% to 0.31% whereas CO concentrations were more than 10000 ppm. At the same coal feed rate of 4 t/h, burner resistances are 480, 600, and 740 Pa for oil flow rates of 50, 100, and 150 kg/h, respectively.