Livestock husbandry in the U.S. significantly contributes to many environmental problems, including the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas (GHG). Anaerobic digesters (ADs) break down organic wastes using bacteria that produce methane, which can be collected and combusted to generate electricity. ADs also reduce odors and pathogens that are common with manure storage and the digested ma...

The challenge of electricity distribution’s upgrade to incorporate new technologies is big, and electric utilities are mandated to work diligently on this agenda, thus making investments to ensure that current networks maintain their electricity supply commitments secure and reliable in face of disruptions and adverse environmental conditions from a variety of sources. The paper presents a new ...

For the continuous production of electricity with solar heat power plants the storage of heat at a temperature level around 400 degrees C is essential. High temperature metal hydrides offer high heat storage capacities around this temperature. Based on Mg-compounds, these hydrides are in principle low-cost materials with excellent cycling stability. Relevant properties of these hydrides and the...

In this paper, we present a provably convergent algorithm for computing the quantile of a random variable that does not require storing all of the sample realizations. We then present an algorithm for optimizing the quantile of a random function which may be characterized by a heavy-tailed distribution where the expectation is not defined. The algorithm is illustrated in the context of electric...

The paper aims to contribute towards further shaping of the institutional framework in Switzerland in order to facilitate the development of small hydropower (<10MW). The context of the research is the current liberalisation process of the electricity sector, the forthcoming electricity gap and the government’s aim to increase the weight of renewable energy sources (RES), as well as post-Kyoto ...

While other industries have some form of inventory to store and buffer their products and services, electricity cannot be massively stored using today’s technologies. As a result, it has to be generated and delivered for immediate consumption; in short, utilities have to balance supply and demand every moment. Storage limitations and societal dependence on electricity lead to several interestin...

This work addresses the scheduling of continuous plants subject to energy constraints related to time-dependent electricity pricing and availability. Discrete and continuous-time formulations are presented that can address these issues together with multiple intermediate due dates. Both formulations rely on the resource-task network process representation. Their computationally performance is c...

In this paper, the German electricity wholesale market is modeled by individual profit maximizing agents. The agents use a learning approach called “model predictive bidding” to choose bidding curves for the upcoming day which are sent to the spot market. The chosen bidding curves thereby maximize the agents’ expected discounted profits. In contrast to traditional agent learning approaches such...

Energy usage, dependability of energy supply and climate change are important topics in society. Today, a number of trends can be recognized in the electricity consumption and generation. On the one hand, the electricity consumption increases and becomes more žuctuating. is is caused by increasing economic activity and prosperity, but also by a shiŸ towards more electricity supplied devices, fo...