The integration of renewable energy sources in the electricity production mix has an important impact on the management of the electricity grid, due to their intermittency. In particular, there is a rising need for flexibility, both on the supply and demand sides. This paper assesses the amount of flexibility that could be reserved from a set of flexible residential heat pumps in a given geogra...

COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS From the dawn of civilization until slightly over a century ago, the sole form of irrigation was subsurface. Water was allowed to enter a planted field, and then drained. From Mesopotamia to the Nile Valley to the plains of India, food supplies were irrigated by drainage ditches and natural flooding. Surface water from accumulated rain or snow was the only water source. ...

An implementation of a reconfigurable FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) is proposed for digital control and acquisition tasks associated with a water quality sensor calibration system. The system permits the water quality (WQ) sensor auto-calibration based on FPGA control of different actuators (pumps and electrovalves) and of WQ data sensor acquisition, real time WQ data processing based on...

The paper is focused on a new passive greenhouse architecture, provided with cold water heat pumps, wind generator and solar panels. This greenhouse is independent of any energetic infrastructure (electric, gas, hot water). The sizing of each element and the automate control are critical in order to reduce the costs. A simplified mathematical model, able to assist the design and the automate co...

Seeking cost reduction and energy savings in water supply by improving the operation of pumps is both an obvious as well as a very efficient possibility to consider. Without making changes to the basic elements of a water supply system, remarkable reductions in operation costs can be achieved by optimising the pump scheduling (PS) problem. The UK Water Research Centre (WRC) [1985] estimates the...

Background: Appearance of multi-drug resistance (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii imposes limitation on antibiotic therapy in patients. Detection of MDR A. baumannii can play a crucial role to prevent MDR strains spreading in hospitals. The aim of this study was determination the efflux pumps gene expression in tigecyclin resistance strains in collected isolates from selected training hospitals in ...