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Advanced Computational Intelligence for Data Analytics, Modeling, Control and Optimisation of Sustainable Energy Systems

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2020) | Viewed by 25488

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK
Interests: modelling, intelligent control and optimisation of renewable energy systems; energy management of smart homes; optimisation and control of future smart grids; electric vehicles, charging management and demand response (V2G and G2V); dynamic wireless charging of electric vehicles; smart mobility
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Guest Editor
UDES (Unité de Développement des Equipements Solaires), CDER - Research Centre on Renewable Energies, Bou ismail, 386, 42415, Tipaza, Algeria
Interests: Renewable energy; Artificial intelligence; Innovative systems, Smart cities, energy storage, energy management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

New rapidly evolving smart grid technologies such as distributed generation from renewable sources and energy storage, the gradual shift towards the electrification of transport and other sectors of the economy, the emergence of wide-area connected smart metering devices and sensors which are changing end-users behaviour, are leading to unprecedented paradigm shifts which are transforming the landscape of the traditional electricity grid. The electricity grid is becoming increasingly more complex with uncertainties and variabilities occurring at all levels in addition to the overwhelming large volume of information and control variables across the interconnected physical infrastructure. These challenges underscore the need for a new class of fast, robust and scalable tools with large-scale data analytics, multi-objective optimisation and control capabilities to improve the flexibility, reliability and resilience of the electricity grid without falling back to expensive reinforcement.

Computational intelligence techniques are nature-inspired computational methodologies and approaches based on Fuzzy Systems, Neural Networks and Meta-Heuristic Evolutionary algorithms which offer a unique solution to these challenges and are yet to become the key drivers poised to revolutionize the next generation low-carbon utility industry.

The aim of this special issue is to disseminate the latest, on-going research and development in the interdisciplinary area of computational intelligence applications to modeling, control and optimization of renewable energy and smart grid technologies.

We invite submissions of original, unpublished, high quality technical and survey papers in the following topics:

  • Machine learning and data analytics in energy systems.
  • Modeling and control of energetic systems.
  • Intelligent energy management and decision support systems for smart grids.
  • Innovative demand response and demand side management strategies.
  • Multi-objective optimization for energy efficiency.
  • Fault diagnosis and condition monitoring in solar and wind energy conversion systems.
  • Electric vehicles and charging management, vehicle-to-grid and grid-to-vehicle integration.
  • Advanced monitoring and forecasting for planning and management of the electricity grid.
  • Intelligent decision support systems for grid cyber-security.

Dr. Mouloud Denai
Dr. Mustapha Hatti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Keywords: computational intelligence
  • neural networks
  • fuzzy systems
  • heuristic optimization
  • machine learning
  • energy data analytics
  • smart grids

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 2173 KiB  
Article
A Probabilistic Multi-Objective Model for Phasor Measurement Units Placement in the Presence of Line Outage
by Yu Huang, Shuqin Li, Xinyue Liu, Yan Zhang, Li Sun and Kai Yang
Sustainability 2019, 11(24), 7097; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11247097 - 11 Dec 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2091
Abstract
Optimal phasor measurement units (PMU) placement was developed to determine the number and locations of PMUs on the premise of full observability of the whole network. In order to enhance reliability under contingencies, redundancy should also be considered beside the number of PMUs [...] Read more.
Optimal phasor measurement units (PMU) placement was developed to determine the number and locations of PMUs on the premise of full observability of the whole network. In order to enhance reliability under contingencies, redundancy should also be considered beside the number of PMUs in optimal phasor measurement units placement problem. Thus, in this paper, a multi-objective model was established to consider the two conflicting components simultaneously, solved by ε-constraint method and the fuzzy satisfying approach. The redundancy here was formulated as average possibility of observability including random component outages, and full possibility formula was applied to calculate the average possibility of observability in the case of single line outage. Finally, the model was employed to the IEEE-57 bus system, and the results verified that the developed model could provide a placement scheme with higher reliability. Full article
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21 pages, 1403 KiB  
Article
An Improved, Negatively Correlated Search for Solving the Unit Commitment Problem’s Integration with Electric Vehicles
by Qun Niu, Kecheng Jiang and Zhile Yang
Sustainability 2019, 11(24), 6945; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11246945 - 05 Dec 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2132
Abstract
With the rapid development of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), the charging of a number of PEVs has already brought huge impact and burden to the power grid, particularly at the medium and low voltage distribution networks. This presents a big challenge for further [...] Read more.
With the rapid development of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), the charging of a number of PEVs has already brought huge impact and burden to the power grid, particularly at the medium and low voltage distribution networks. This presents a big challenge for further mass roll-out of electric vehicles. To assess the impact of charging of substantial number of electric vehicles on the grid, a model of 30000 PEVs integrated with unit commitment (UCEV) was investigated in this study. The unit commitment was a large-scale, mixed-integer, nonlinear, NP-Hard (non-deterministic polynomial) optimization problem, while the integration of PEVs further increased the complexity of the model. In this paper, a global best inspired negatively correlated search (GBNCS) method which extends the evolutionary logic of negatively correlated search is proposed to tackle the UCEV problem. In the proposed algorithm, a rounding transfer function in GBNCS, is deployed to convert real-valued variables into binary ones; further, the global best information is combined in the population to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. Numerical results confirmed that the proposed GBNCS can achieve good performance in both a basic IEEE 10 unit commitment problem and the UCEV problem. It was also shown that, among four charging modes, the off-peak charging mode and EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) charging mode are more economical in PEV charging. Full article
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16 pages, 4715 KiB  
Article
Modeling of Heat Transfer Coefficient in Solar Greenhouse Type Drying Systems
by Kamil Neyfel Çerçi and Mehmet Daş
Sustainability 2019, 11(18), 5127; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11185127 - 19 Sep 2019
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4052
Abstract
As a sustainable energy source, solar energy is used in many applications. A greenhouse type dryer, which is a food drying system, directly benefits from solar energy. Convective heat transfer coefficient (hc) is an important parameter in food drying systems, [...] Read more.
As a sustainable energy source, solar energy is used in many applications. A greenhouse type dryer, which is a food drying system, directly benefits from solar energy. Convective heat transfer coefficient (hc) is an important parameter in food drying systems, in terms of system design and performance. Many parameters and equations are used to determine hc. However, as it is difficult to manually process and analyze large amounts of data and different formulations, machine learning algorithms are preferred. In this study, natural and forced convective solar greenhouse type dryers were designed. In a solar greenhouse type dryer, grape is dried in natural (GDNC) and forced convection (GDFC). For convective heat transfer coefficient (hc), predictive models were created using a multilayer perceptron (MLP)—which has many uses in drying applications, as mentioned in the literature—and decision tree (DT), which has not been used before in food drying applications. The machine learning algorithms and results of the estimated models are compared in this study. Error analyses were performed to determine the accuracy rates of the obtained models. As a result, the hc value of the dried grape product in a natural convective solar greenhouse type dryer was 11.3% higher than that of the forced type. The DT algorithm was found to be a more successful model than the MLP algorithm in estimating hc values in HDFC according to Root Mean Square Error. (RMSE = 0.0903). On the contrary, the MLP algorithm was more successful than the DT algorithm in estimating hc values in GDNC (RMSE = 0.0815). Full article
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25 pages, 5546 KiB  
Article
Nonlinear Predictive Control for a Boiler–Turbine Unit Based on a Local Model Network and Immune Genetic Algorithm
by Hongxia Zhu, Gang Zhao, Li Sun and Kwang Y. Lee
Sustainability 2019, 11(18), 5102; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11185102 - 18 Sep 2019
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2483
Abstract
This paper proposes a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) strategy based on a local model network (LMN) and a heuristic optimization method to solve the control problem for a nonlinear boiler–turbine unit. First, the LMN model of the boiler–turbine unit is identified by [...] Read more.
This paper proposes a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) strategy based on a local model network (LMN) and a heuristic optimization method to solve the control problem for a nonlinear boiler–turbine unit. First, the LMN model of the boiler–turbine unit is identified by using a data-driven modeling method and converted into a time-varying global predictor. Then, the nonlinear constrained optimization problem for the predictive control is solved online by a specially designed immune genetic algorithm (IGA), which calculates the optimal control law at each sampling instant. By introducing an adaptive terminal cost in the objective function and utilizing local fictitious controllers to improve the initial population of IGA, the proposed NMPC can guarantee the system stability while the computational complexity is reduced since a shorter prediction horizon can be adopted. The effectiveness of the proposed NMPC is validated by simulations on a 500 MW coal-fired boiler–turbine unit. Full article
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20 pages, 5509 KiB  
Article
Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm-Based Optimization of PID Controller Parameters for Fuel Cell Voltage and Fuel Utilization
by Yuxiao Qin, Guodong Zhao, Qingsong Hua, Li Sun and Soumyadeep Nag
Sustainability 2019, 11(12), 3290; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11123290 - 14 Jun 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2723
Abstract
Nowadays, given the great deal of fossil fuel consumption and associated environmental pollution, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have shown their great merits in terms of high energy conversion efficiency and low emissions as a stationary power source. To ensure power quality and [...] Read more.
Nowadays, given the great deal of fossil fuel consumption and associated environmental pollution, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have shown their great merits in terms of high energy conversion efficiency and low emissions as a stationary power source. To ensure power quality and efficiency, both the output voltage and fuel utilization of an SOFC should be tightly controlled. However, these two control objectives usually conflict with each other, making the controller design of an SOFC quite challenging and sophisticated. To this end, a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) was employed to tune the proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller parameters through the following steps: (1) Identifying the SOFC system through a least squares method; (2) designing the control based on a relative gain array (RGA) analysis; and (3) applying the MOGA to a simulation to search for a set of optimal solutions. By comparing the control performance of the Pareto solutions, satisfactory control parameters were determined. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed method could reduce the impact of disturbances and regulate output voltage and fuel utilization simultaneously (with strong robustness). Full article
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14 pages, 860 KiB  
Article
Statistical and Electrical Features Evaluation for Electrical Appliances Energy Disaggregation
by Pascal A. Schirmer and Iosif Mporas
Sustainability 2019, 11(11), 3222; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11113222 - 11 Jun 2019
Cited by 43 | Viewed by 4422
Abstract
In this paper we evaluate several well-known and widely used machine learning algorithms for regression in the energy disaggregation task. Specifically, the Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring approach was considered and the K-Nearest-Neighbours, Support Vector Machines, Deep Neural Networks and Random Forest algorithms were evaluated [...] Read more.
In this paper we evaluate several well-known and widely used machine learning algorithms for regression in the energy disaggregation task. Specifically, the Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring approach was considered and the K-Nearest-Neighbours, Support Vector Machines, Deep Neural Networks and Random Forest algorithms were evaluated across five datasets using seven different sets of statistical and electrical features. The experimental results demonstrated the importance of selecting both appropriate features and regression algorithms. Analysis on device level showed that linear devices can be disaggregated using statistical features, while for non-linear devices the use of electrical features significantly improves the disaggregation accuracy, as non-linear appliances have non-sinusoidal current draw and thus cannot be well parametrized only by their active power consumption. The best performance in terms of energy disaggregation accuracy was achieved by the Random Forest regression algorithm. Full article
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13 pages, 2667 KiB  
Article
An Analysis of Disparities and Driving Factors of Carbon Emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt
by Decai Tang, Yan Zhang and Brandon J. Bethel
Sustainability 2019, 11(8), 2362; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11082362 - 19 Apr 2019
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 3079
Abstract
As one of the “three major strategies” for China’s regional development, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is under severe pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal disparities, and driving factors of carbon emissions based on energy consumption and [...] Read more.
As one of the “three major strategies” for China’s regional development, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is under severe pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal disparities, and driving factors of carbon emissions based on energy consumption and related economic development data in the YREB over the 2005–2016 11-year period. Using the Stochastic Impacts Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model, we empirically test the factors affecting YREB carbon emissions and key drivers in various provinces and municipalities. The main findings are as follows. First, per capita GDP, both industrial structure and energy intensity have positive effects on increasing carbon emissions. Second, per capita GDP and energy intensity have the largest impact on the increase of carbon emissions, and the urbanization rate has the largest inhibitory effect on carbon emissions. Full article
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17 pages, 1904 KiB  
Article
A Green Supply-Chain Decision Model for Energy-Saving Products That Accounts for Government Subsidies
by Jian Xue, Ruifeng Gong, Laijun Zhao, Xiaoqing Ji and Yan Xu
Sustainability 2019, 11(8), 2209; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11082209 - 12 Apr 2019
Cited by 47 | Viewed by 3876
Abstract
Government subsidies are a common policy adopted to promote energy conservation and emission reduction. The decision-making that occurs within the green supply chain for energy-saving products under government subsidies is an area of great academic interest and game theory is becoming a popular [...] Read more.
Government subsidies are a common policy adopted to promote energy conservation and emission reduction. The decision-making that occurs within the green supply chain for energy-saving products under government subsidies is an area of great academic interest and game theory is becoming a popular tool in such research. In this paper, we examined centralized and decentralized decision-making models for the green supply chain and a coordinated decision-making model for revenue-sharing contracts based on game theory. We studied the effects of government subsidies on retail prices, energy conservation levels, market demand, supply chain profits, and social welfare for energy-saving products. We then compared the effectiveness of the three models using a numerical example. Our results revealed the range of contract parameters for which manufacturer and retailer profits increase. Our results show that government subsidies can significantly improve social welfare and promote the improvement of energy-saving products. Centralized decision-making generates higher profits than decentralized decisions and government subsidies were positively correlated with the level of energy conservation, product prices, and market demand. Revenue sharing contract coordination decisions can coordinate the supply chain and achieve the same effect as centralized decisions. Full article
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