Investigation of factors driving the costs of operating the 2020 Irish power system with large-scale wind generation

The main goal of this work is to determine the true cost incurred by the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in order to meet their EU renewable electricity targets. The primary all-island of Ireland policy goal is that 40% of electricity will come from renewable sources in 2020. From this it is expected that wind generation on the Irish electricity system will be in the region of 32-37% of total generation. This leads to issues resulting from wind energy being a non-synchronous, unpredictable and variable source of energy use on a scale never seen before for a single synchronous system. If changes are not made to traditional operational practices, the efficient running of the electricity system will be directly affected by these issues in the coming years. Using models of the electricity system for the all-island grid of Ireland, the effects of high wind energy penetration expected to be present in 2020 are examined. These models were developed using a unit commitment, economic dispatch tool called PLEXOS which allows for a detailed representation of the electricity system to be achieved down to individual generator level. These models replicate the true running of the electricity system through use of day-ahead scheduling and semi-relaxed use of these schedules that reflects the Transmission System Operator's of real time decision making on dispatch. In addition, it carefully considers other non-wind priority dispatch generation technologies that have an effect on the overall system. In the models developed, three main issues associated with wind energy integration were selected to be examined in detail to determine the sensitivity of assumptions presented in other studies. These three issues include wind energy's non-synchronous nature, its variability and spatial correlation, and its unpredictability. This leads to an examination of the effects in three areas: the need for system operation constraints required for system security; different onshore to offshore ratios of installed wind energy; and the degrees of accuracy in wind energy forecasting. Each of these areas directly impact the way in which the electricity system is run as they address each of the three issues associated with wind energy stated above, respectively. It is shown that assumptions in these three areas have a large effect on the results in terms of total generation costs, wind curtailment and generator technology type dispatch. In particular accounting for these issues has resulted in wind curtailment being predicted in much larger quantities than had been previously reported. This would have a large effect on wind energy companies because it is already a very low profit margin industry. Results from this work have shown that the relaxation of system operation constraints is crucial to the economic running of the electricity system with large improvements shown in the reduction of wind curtailment and system generation costs. There are clear benefits in having a proportion of the wind installed offshore in Ireland which would help to reduce variability of wind energy generation on the system and therefore reduce wind curtailment. With envisaged future improvements in day-ahead wind forecasting from 8% to 4% mean absolute error, there are potential reductions in wind curtailment system costs and open cycle gas turbine usage. This work illustrates the consequences of assumptions in the areas of system operation constraints, onshore/offshore installed wind capacities and accuracy in wind forecasting to better inform the true costs associated with running Ireland's changing electricity system as it continues to decarbonise into the near future. This work also proposes to illustrate, through the use of Ireland as a case study, the effects that will become ever more prevalent in other synchronous systems as they pursue a path of increasing renewable energy generation.

An investigation by AFM and TEM of the mechanism of anodic formation of nanoporosity in n-InP in KOH

The early stages of nanoporous layer formation, under anodic conditions in the absence of light, were investigated for n-type InP with a carrier concentration of ∼3× 1018 cm-3 in 5 mol dm-3 KOH and a mechanism for the process is proposed. At potentials less than ∼0.35 V, spectroscopic ellipsometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed a thin oxide film on the surface. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) of electrode surfaces showed no pitting below ∼0.35 V but clearly showed etch pit formation in the range 0.4-0.53 V. The density of surface pits increased with time in both linear potential sweep and constant potential reaching a constant value at a time corresponding approximately to the current peak in linear sweep voltammograms and current-time curves at constant potential. TEM clearly showed individual nanoporous domains separated from the surface by a dense ∼40 nm InP layer. It is concluded that each domain develops as a result of directionally preferential pore propagation from an individual surface pit which forms a channel through this near-surface layer. As they grow larger, domains meet, and the merging of multiple domains eventually leads to a continuous nanoporous sub-surface region.

A first principles analysis of the effect of hydrogen concentration in hydrogenated amorphous silicon on the formation of strained Si-Si bonds and the optical and mobility gaps

In this paper, we use a model of hydrogenated amorphous silicon generated from molecular dynamics with density functional theory calculations to examine how the atomic geometry and the optical and mobility gaps are influenced by mild hydrogen oversaturation. The optical and mobility gaps show a volcano curve as the hydrogen content varies from undersaturation to mild oversaturation, with largest gaps obtained at the saturation hydrogen concentration. At the same time, mid-gap states associated with dangling bonds and strained Si-Si bonds disappear at saturation but reappear at mild oversaturation, which is consistent with the evolution of optical gap. The distribution of Si-Si bond distances provides the key to the change in electronic properties. In the undersaturation regime, the new electronic states in the gap arise from the presence of dangling bonds and strained Si-Si bonds, which are longer than the equilibrium Si-Si distance. Increasing hydrogen concentration up to saturation reduces the strained bonds and removes dangling bonds. In the case of mild oversaturation, the mid-gap states arise exclusively from an increase in the density of strained Si-Si bonds. Analysis of our structure shows that the extra hydrogen atoms form a bridge between neighbouring silicon atoms, thus increasing the Si-Si distance and increasing disorder in the sample.

Formation of sub-7 nm feature size PS-b-P4VP block copolymer structures by solvent vapour process

The nanometer range structure produced by thin films of diblock copolymers makes them a great of interest as templates for the microelectronics industry. We investigated the effect of annealing solvents and/or mixture of the solvents in case of symmetric Poly (styrene-block-4vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) diblock copolymer to get the desired line patterns. In this paper, we used different molecular weights PS-b-P4VP to demonstrate the scalability of such high χ BCP system which requires precise fine-tuning of interfacial energies achieved by surface treatment and that improves the wetting property, ordering, and minimizes defect densities. Bare Silicon Substrates were also modified with polystyrene brush and ethylene glycol self-assembled monolayer in a simple quick reproducible way. Also, a novel and simple in situ hard mask technique was used to generate sub-7nm Iron oxide nanowires with a high aspect ratio on Silicon substrate, which can be used to develop silicon nanowires post pattern transfer.