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Advanced Control in the Energy Sector
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Advanced Control in the Energy Sector

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2019) | Viewed by 13002

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Kauko Leiviskä

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Technology, Control Engineering, University of Oulu, 90570 Oulu, Finland
Interests: intelligent systems; neural networks; fuzzy logic; intelligent optimization; machine learning; variable selection; software sensors; process control; paper industry; steel industry; energy systems; building automation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced control has played an important role in maintaining the production and quality of processes at an optimal level. This is mainly due to the stabilizing effect of well-designed control systems and their ability to respond to process disturbances. The same agrees with the production and consumption of energy, where the requirements for control are even tighter than in production processes because of high requirements for safety and security.

Technological development has also changed the overall picture in the energy sector. Moving from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy production—bio, solar, wind and tidal—has brought along new possibilities, and has also meant new challenges for operation, monitoring and control. On the one hand, production is concentrated on bigger units, and on the other hand, distributed production is necessary to take advantage of locally-available fuels, when the transportation of these fuels is not economically or environmentally feasible. This leads to increasing requirements for coordination and security aspects that are present in everyday life, e.g., in district heating systems, farm energy production, and secure energy for hospitals, just to give a few examples. Different forms of bioenergy need different modelling and control skills and understanding of the phenomena occurring in recently developed processes. Hydrogen economy leads to inevitable changes even in our infrastructure and these processes also require efficient control.

Control technologies also change rapidly. Communications systems rely more and more on wireless technologies and web-based approaches. This is a grand challenge for energy production, where the safety solutions have favored wired systems. Web-based systems also have good positive contributions. IoT development makes the collection of huge amounts of on-line measurements possible, together with the possibilities of fusing these with data coming from other sources. This makes, e.g., the forecasting of future energy consumption easier in smart city systems, based on customer behaviors. This also means that we are facing problems of data privacy and ownership.

It is my pleasure to invite you to submit original research papers, short communications or state-of-the-art reviews within the scope of this Special Issue. Contributions can include one or more of the below-mentioned topics, but are not limited to them.

Prof. Kauko Leiviskä
Guest Editor

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. Materials 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 2600 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

  • advanced control
  • intelligent methods
  • energy optimization
  • large-scale monitoring
  • automation and control systems
  • Internet-based systems (IoT)
  • energy production
  • integrated production and consumption
  • distributed production
  • consumer/prosumer control
  • sustainable energy
  • energy storaging
  • smart grids
  • smart cities
  • safety and security in energy systems

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 2359 KiB  
Article
Achieving Lower District Heating Network Temperatures Using Feed-Forward MPC
by Nathan Zimmerman, Konstantinos Kyprianidis and Carl-Fredrik Lindberg
Materials 2019, 12(15), 2465; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12152465 - 02 Aug 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2625
Abstract
The focus of this work is to present the feasibility of lowering the supply and return temperatures of district heating networks in order to achieve energy savings through the implementation of feed-forward model predictive control. The current level of district heating technology dictates [...] Read more.
The focus of this work is to present the feasibility of lowering the supply and return temperatures of district heating networks in order to achieve energy savings through the implementation of feed-forward model predictive control. The current level of district heating technology dictates a need for higher supply temperatures, which is not the case when considering the future outlook. In part, this can be attributed to the fact that current networks are being controlled by operator experience and outdoor temperatures. The prospects of reducing network temperatures can be evaluated by developing a dynamic model of the process which can then be used for control purposes. Two scenarios are presented in this work, to not only evaluate a controller’s performance in supplying lower network temperatures, but to also assess the boundaries of the return temperature. In Scenario 1, the historical load is used as a feed-forward signal to the controller, and in Scenario 2, a load prediction model is used as the feed-forward signal. The findings for both scenarios suggest that the new control approach can lead to a load reduction of 12.5% and 13.7% respectively for the heat being supplied to the network. With the inclusion of predictions with increased accuracy on end-user demand and feed-back, the return temperature values can be better sustained, and can lead to a decrease in supply temperatures and an increase in energy savings on the production side. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Control in the Energy Sector)
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22 pages, 5236 KiB  
Article
Industrial Ceramic Brick Drying in Oven by CFD
by Morgana de Vasconcellos Araújo, Antonildo Santos Pereira, Jéssica Lacerda de Oliveira, Vanderson Alves Agra Brandão, Francisco de Assis Brasileiro Filho, Rodrigo Moura da Silva and Antonio Gilson Barbosa de Lima
Materials 2019, 12(10), 1612; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12101612 - 16 May 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4255
Abstract
The drying process is a step of ceramic brick production which requires the control of process variables to provide a final product with a porous uniform structure, reducing superficial and volumetric defects and production costs. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool [...] Read more.
The drying process is a step of ceramic brick production which requires the control of process variables to provide a final product with a porous uniform structure, reducing superficial and volumetric defects and production costs. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an important tool in this process control, predicting the drying physical phenomenon and providing data that improve the industrial efficiency production. Furthermore, research involving CFD brick drying has neglected the effects of oven parameters, limiting the analysis only to the bricks. In this sense, the aim of this work is to numerically study the hot air-drying process of an industrial hollow ceramic brick in an oven at 70 °C. The results of the water mass and temperature distributions inside the brick, as well as moisture, temperature, velocity and pressure fields of the oven drying air at different process times are shown, analyzed and compared with experimental data, presenting a good agreement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Control in the Energy Sector)
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17 pages, 1839 KiB  
Article
Enabling Demand Side Management: Heat Demand Forecasting at City Level
by Petri Hietaharju, Mika Ruusunen and Kauko Leiviskä
Materials 2019, 12(2), 202; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12020202 - 09 Jan 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3166
Abstract
Implementation of new energy efficiency measures for the heating and building sectors is of utmost importance. Demand side management offers means to involve individual buildings in the optimization of the heat demand at city level to improve energy efficiency. In this work, two [...] Read more.
Implementation of new energy efficiency measures for the heating and building sectors is of utmost importance. Demand side management offers means to involve individual buildings in the optimization of the heat demand at city level to improve energy efficiency. In this work, two models were applied to forecast the heat demand from individual buildings up to a city-wide area. District heating data at the city level from more than 4000 different buildings was utilized in the validation of the forecast models. Forecast simulations with the applied models and measured data showed that, during the heating season, the relative error of the city level heat demand forecast for 48 h was 4% on average. In individual buildings, the accuracy of the models varied based on the building type and heat demand pattern. The forecasting accuracy, the limited amount of measurement information and the short time required for model calibration enable the models to be applied to the whole building stock. This should enable demand side management and lead to the predictive optimization of heat demand at city level, leading to increased energy efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Control in the Energy Sector)
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14 pages, 2476 KiB  
Article
Hierarchical Control of an Integrated Fuel Processing and Fuel Cell System
by Markku Ohenoja, Mika Ruusunen and Kauko Leiviskä
Materials 2019, 12(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12010021 - 21 Dec 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2594
Abstract
An advanced model-based control method for the integrated fuel processing and a fuel cell system consisting of ethanol reforming, hydrogen purification, and a proton exchange membrane fuel cell is presented. For process identification, a physical model of the process chain was constructed. Subsequently, [...] Read more.
An advanced model-based control method for the integrated fuel processing and a fuel cell system consisting of ethanol reforming, hydrogen purification, and a proton exchange membrane fuel cell is presented. For process identification, a physical model of the process chain was constructed. Subsequently, the simulated process was approximated with data-driven control models. Based on these control models, a hierarchical control framework consisting of model predictive controller and a global optimization algorithm was introduced. The performance of the new control method was evaluated with simulations. Results indicate that the new optimization concept enables resource efficient and fast control of the studied energy conversion process. Fast and efficient fuel cell process could then provide sustainable power source for autonomous and mobile applications in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Control in the Energy Sector)
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