MV producers and consumers agents characterization with DSM techniques

This paper consist in the establishment of a Virtual Producer/Consumer Agent (VPCA) in order to optimize the integrated management of distributed energy resources and to improve and control Demand Side Management DSM) and its aggregated loads. The paper presents the VPCA architecture and the proposed function-based organization to be used in order to coordinate the several generation technologies, the different load types and storage systems. This VPCA organization uses a frame work based on data mining techniques to characterize the costumers. The paper includes results of several experimental tests cases, using real data and taking into account electricity generation resources as well as consumption data.

Scheduling distributed energy resources in an isolated grid - an artificial neural network approach

Power Systems (PS), have been affected by substantial penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) and the operation in competitive environments. The future PS will have to deal with large-scale integration of DG and other distributed energy resources (DER), such as storage means, and provide to market agents the means to ensure a flexible and secure operation. Virtual power players (VPP) can aggregate a diversity of players, namely generators and consumers, and a diversity of energy resources, including electricity generation based on several technologies, storage and demand response. This paper proposes an artificial neural network (ANN) based methodology to support VPP resource schedule. The trained network is able to achieve good schedule results requiring modest computational means. A real data test case is presented.

Intelligent SCADA for load control

A supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system is an integrated platform that incorporates several components and it has been applied in the field of power systems and several engineering applications to monitor, operate and control a lot of processes. In the future electrical networks, SCADA systems are essential for an intelligent management of resources like distributed generation and demand response, implemented in the smart grid context. This paper presents a SCADA system for a typical residential house. The application is implemented on MOVICON™11 software. The main objective is to manage the residential consumption, reducing or curtailing loads to keep the power consumption in or below a specified setpoint, imposed by the costumer and the generation availability.

Intelligent multi-player smart grid management considering distributed energy resources and demand response

The smart grid concept is rapidly evolving in the direction of practical implementations able to bring smart grid advantages into practice. Evolution in legacy equipment and infrastructures is not sufficient to accomplish the smart grid goals as it does not consider the needs of the players operating in a complex environment which is dynamic and competitive in nature. Artificial intelligence based applications can provide solutions to these problems, supporting decentralized intelligence and decision-making. A case study illustrates the importance of Virtual Power Players (VPP) and multi-player negotiation in the context of smart grids. This case study is based on real data and aims at optimizing energy resource management, considering generation, storage and demand response.

Distributed energy resources management with cyber-physical SCADA in the context of future smart grids

In the energy management of a small power system, the scheduling of the generation units is a crucial problem for which adequate methodologies can maximize the performance of the energy supply. This paper proposes an innovative methodology for distributed energy resources management. The optimal operation of distributed generation, demand response and storage resources is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model (MILP) and solved by a deterministic optimization technique CPLEX-based implemented in General Algebraic Modeling Systems (GAMS). The paper deals with a vision for the grids of the future, focusing on conceptual and operational aspects of electrical grids characterized by an intensive penetration of DG, in the scope of competitive environments and using artificial intelligence methodologies to attain the envisaged goals. These concepts are implemented in a computational framework which includes both grid and market simulation.

A probabilistic methodology for distributed generation location in isolated electrical service area

Distributed generation unlike centralized electrical generation aims to generate electrical energy on small scale as near as possible to load centers, interchanging electric power with the network. This work presents a probabilistic methodology conceived to assist the electric system planning engineers in the selection of the distributed generation location, taking into account the hourly load changes or the daily load cycle. The hourly load centers, for each of the different hourly load scenarios, are calculated deterministically. These location points, properly weighted according to their load magnitude, are used to calculate the best fit probability distribution. This distribution is used to determine the maximum likelihood perimeter of the area where each source distributed generation point should preferably be located by the planning engineers. This takes into account, for example, the availability and the cost of the land lots, which are factors of special relevance in urban areas, as well as several obstacles important for the final selection of the candidates of the distributed generation points. The proposed methodology has been applied to a real case, assuming three different bivariate probability distributions: the Gaussian distribution, a bivariate version of Freund’s exponential distribution and the Weibull probability distribution. The methodology algorithm has been programmed in MATLAB. Results are presented and discussed for the application of the methodology to a realistic case and demonstrate the ability of the proposed methodology for efficiently handling the determination of the best location of the distributed generation and their corresponding distribution networks.

Ativação muscular na anca e joelho na variação do ângulo de Valgo durante a fase de apoio do salto vertical

Mestrado em Fisioterapia.

Distributed Model Predictive Control for Housing with Hourly Auction of Available Energy

This paper presents a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) for indoor thermal comfort that simultaneously optimizes the consumption of a limited shared energy resource. The control objective of each subsystem is to minimize the heating/cooling energy cost while maintaining the indoor temperature and used power inside bounds. In a distributed coordinated environment, the control uses multiple dynamically decoupled agents (one for each subsystem/house) aiming to achieve satisfaction of coupling constraints. According to the hourly power demand profile, each house assigns a priority level that indicates how much is willing to bid in auction for consume the limited clean resource. This procedure allows the bidding value vary hourly and consequently, the agents order to access to the clean energy also varies. Despite of power constraints, all houses have also thermal comfort constraints that must be fulfilled. The system is simulated with several houses in a distributed environment.

Tendência da transmissão vertical de Aids após terapia anti-retroviral no Brasil

OBJETIVO: O crescimento de casos de Aids entre mulheres teve como conseqüência o aumento da transmissão vertical da infecção pelo vírus da imunodeficiência adquirida. Medidas de controle dessa modalidade de transmissão foram implementadas a partir de 1996. O objetivo do estudo foi analisar a tendência temporal da transmissão vertical de Aids em crianças brasileiras. MÉTODOS: Foram incluídas no estudo crianças nascidas entre 1990 e 2001 no Brasil. Utilizou-se o banco de casos notificados como Aids em menores de 13 anos, no período de 1990 a 2004. Modelos de regressão exponencial, ajustados à série temporal, forneceram as taxas de variação anual e os valores observados e esperados para todo o período. RESULTADOS: Observou-se tendência significativamente crescente para os casos com ano de nascimento no período anterior à introdução da terapia anti-retroviral, com taxa de crescimento em torno de 12% (t<0,003) ao ano, e com diferenciais entre os Estados entre 5,9% e 31%. A análise dos casos observados e esperados, para cada uma das macrorregiões, mostrou uma redução dos casos para as crianças nascidas a partir de 1997, atingindo cifras consistentemente menores a cada ano. O número de casos notificados para crianças nascidas em 2001 representou menos de 90% dos casos esperados. CONCLUSÕES: Os resultados obtidos sugerem uma resposta favorável à implementação das políticas de intervenção na prevenção da transmissão vertical do HIV, no Brasil, como ocorreu em outras partes do mundo.

A denoising approach for iterative side information creation in distributed video coding

In distributed video coding, motion estimation is typically performed at the decoder to generate the side information, increasing the decoder complexity while providing low complexity encoding in comparison with predictive video coding. Motion estimation can be performed once to create the side information or several times to refine the side information quality along the decoding process. In this paper, motion estimation is performed at the decoder side to generate multiple side information hypotheses which are adaptively and dynamically combined, whenever additional decoded information is available. The proposed iterative side information creation algorithm is inspired in video denoising filters and requires some statistics of the virtual channel between each side information hypothesis and the original data. With the proposed denoising algorithm for side information creation, a RD performance gain up to 1.2 dB is obtained for the same bitrate.

A Model to Evaluate Vertical Handovers on JRRM

In a heterogeneous cellular networks environment, users behaviour and network deployment configuration parameters have an impact on the overall Quality of Service. This paper proposes a new and simple model that, on the one hand, explores the users behaviour impact on the network by having mobility, multi-service usage and traffic generation profiles as inputs, and on the other, enables the network setup configuration evaluation impact on the Joint Radio Resource Management (JRRM), assessing some basic JRRM performance indicators, like Vertical Handover (VHO) probabilities, average bit rates, and number of active users, among others. VHO plays an important role in fulfilling seamless users sessions transfer when mobile terminals cross different Radio Access Technologies (RATs) boundaries. Results show that high bit rate RATs suffer and generate more influence from/on other RATs, by producing additional signalling traffic to a JRRM entity. Results also show that the VHOs probability can range from 5 up to 65%, depending on RATs cluster radius and users mobility profile.

Distribuição vertical e sazonal de Anopheles (Kerteszia) em Ilha Comprida, SP

OBJETIVO: Anopheles bellator e An. cruzii são vetores da malária-bromélia, característicos de áreas preservadas. O objetivo do estudo foi analisar a distribuição sazonal e vertical desses anofelinos, visando contribuir para a avaliação do risco de transmissão desse agravo. MÉTODOS: No município de Ilha Comprida, SP, foram instaladas armadilhas luminosas tipo CDC iscadas com gelo seco, das 17 às 20h, a um, seis e 12m do solo, quinzenalmente, de setembro de 2001 a setembro de 2002. A relação da densidade desses anofelinos com o clima foi avaliada pelo coeficiente de Spearman e suas densidades entre os estratos foram comparadas pelo teste não paramétrico de Mann-Whitney. RESULTADOS: Do total de 55.226 mosquitos, 1.341 eram An. bellator (2,4% do total de Culicidae), sendo capturados 278 indivíduos próximo ao solo, 261 a seis metros e 802 na copa (12 m). Na mesma ordem, foram capturados 452, 1.032 e 4.420 adultos de An. cruzii, totalizando 5.904 mosquitos desta espécie (10,7%). Houve correlação positiva entre a densidade das duas espécies com a temperatura máxima, e entre An. bellator e amplitude térmica diária. As densidades das duas espécies foram maiores na copa. Nos três estratos, An. cruzii predominou sobre An. bellator. CONCLUSÕES: Confirmou-se o comportamento acrodendrófilo dessas espécies, principalmente An. cruzii. Após medidas drásticas de controle, esses anofelinos permaneceram na região mas, atualmente, não são alvo de vigilância entomológica. A persistência da transmissão de malária autóctone e o incremento de atividades de ecoturismo na região apontam a necessidade de monitoramento dessas espécies.

Design and performance of a novel low-density parity-check code for distributed video coding

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are nowadays one of the hottest topics in coding theory, notably due to their advantages in terms of bit error rate performance and low complexity. In order to exploit the potential of the Wyner-Ziv coding paradigm, practical distributed video coding (DVC) schemes should use powerful error correcting codes with near-capacity performance. In this paper, new ways to design LDPC codes for the DVC paradigm are proposed and studied. The new LDPC solutions rely on merging parity-check nodes, which corresponds to reduce the number of rows in the parity-check matrix. This allows to change gracefully the compression ratio of the source (DCT coefficient bitplane) according to the correlation between the original and the side information. The proposed LDPC codes reach a good performance for a wide range of source correlations and achieve a better RD performance when compared to the popular turbo codes.

Distributed process execution in collaborative networks

Processes are a central entity in enterprise collaboration. Collaborative processes need to be executed and coordinated in a distributed Computational platform where computers are connected through heterogeneous networks and systems. Life cycle management of such collaborative processes requires a framework able to handle their diversity based on different computational and communication requirements. This paper proposes a rational for such framework, points out key requirements and proposes it strategy for a supporting technological infrastructure. Beyond the portability of collaborative process definitions among different technological bindings, a framework to handle different life cycle phases of those definitions is presented and discussed. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Gestão do deslastre de cargas: Évora como caso de estudo

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica na Área de Especialização de Energia