Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
Pakistan is the world’s sixth-most populous country with a semi-industrialized economy. It has been always an energy importer and dependent on fossil fuels. Great pressure is imposed on Pakistan’s national grid from the rise in fossil fuel costs, variations in the annual interest rate, and increased costs of greenhouse emissions. To meet the ever-increasing energy demand, the Government of Pakistan has decided to further harness wind and solar energies currently having a negligible share in Pakistan’s energy portfolio. Despite the importance of this issue, no study has been conducted so far on the cogeneration of power, heat, and hydrogen in Pakistan. Accordingly, this study is aimed at technical–economic–environmental sensitivity analysis of supplying electric and thermal loads of a residential building in Karachi by an off-grid wind-solar-fuel cell system. To this end, 4500000 possible cases were analyzed, simulated, and optimized with the HOMER software using 20-year average meteorological data from the NASA website. A sensitivity analysis was performed on this system for the first time in Pakistan. The other novelties are the use of dump loads for converting the surplus electricity into heat and also heat recovering in the fuel cells. The results showed the great potential of the station understudy for supplying the required power and heat by renewable energies. Hydrogen production was also affordable at every emission penalty price with an interest rate of less than 9%. Moreover, dump loads play a key role in supplying the thermal demand. Comparison of the wind turbine–solar cell–fuel cell–battery system with the wind turbine–solar cell–battery and solar cell–battery systems indicated that the internal rate of return and the payback period were, respectively, 9.39% and 11.4?years and 11.7% and 11?years. According to these results, it is recommend that Pakistani authorities promote the use of renewable energies through incentives and investment subsidies.

Abstract
Standalone rural microgrid (MG) systems are considered as a sustainable and economical solutions towards rural area electrifications. Specific control schemes are necessary to adopt for reliable and economic performance of these rural MGs. This study focuses on the optimal utilization of biomass potential considering specific applications of bio generator (BG) with BG-PV-WT-BSS and BG-PV-SMES based standalone rural MG systems. In the first case of the BG-PV-WT-BSS, the optimal sizing/selection of DGs of a rural MG has been proposed using the improved-MILP (I-MILP) approach. The objectives of this study were to minimize total net present cost (TNPC), the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and GHG emissions. In the second case of BG-PV-SMES, the simulation model of the rural microgrid consisting of a variable speed bio generator (VSBG) and photovoltaic (PV) has been developed. Afterwards, a simplified EMS has been designed for the coordinated operation control of the distributed energy resources (DERs) in the rural MGs using MATLAB/Simulink®^R environment. For the DGs connected via power converter, FOSMC and FCS-MPC based coordinated control has been proposed in the simplified EMS. The purpose of the FOSMC and FCS-MPC based power converter is the improvement of the system performance (for instance power quality, regulated voltage and THD) under external disturbances. Simulation analysis shows the better operation of FOSMC and FCS-MPC under less THD and improved power quality.

Abstract
The expansion and development of the electricity distribution grid is a complex multicriteria decision problem. The planning definition should take into consideration the investment benefits on the security of supply, quality of service, losses, as well as in other network features. Given the variety of assets and their context-dependent effects, estimating their global impact is very challenging. An additional difficulty is the combination of different types of benefits into a simple and clear portrayal of the planning alternatives. This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the benefits of distribution investments, in terms of five features: security of supply, quality of service, network losses, operational efficiency and new services. The approach is based on the adoption of objective and measurable indicators for each feature. The approach was tested with real data of Portuguese distribution grids and the results support the adopted approach and are being used as a decision-aid tool for grid planning. © 2020 IEEE.

Abstract
This paper reports the main results that were obtained in the scope of a consultancy study that was developed for EDP Distribuição, the main Portuguese distribution company, to evaluate the impact of a number of changes to be introduced in the Tariff System. These changes were proposed by ERSE, the Portuguese Regulatory Agency for the Energy Services, and included the redesign of the tariff periods and the possible introduction of a geographic differentiation on the Access Tariff to reflect different daily and yearly demand and flow patterns along the country. This work involved the development of a Cost Benefit Analysis, CBA, as well as a Pilot Project that included 82 MV and HV consumers to evaluate several Key Performance Indices, KPI, used to characterize the proposed changes on the tariff system. © 2020 IEEE.