Cette thèse porte sur le développement de nouvelles stratégies de commande et d’observation adaptatives par Modes Glissants (MG) et par Modes Glissants d’Ordres Supérieurs (MGOS). En effet, la mise en œuvre des commandes par MG et MGOS classiques nécessite la connaissance des limites supérieures des perturbations ou de leurs dérivées, souvent inconnues. Le premier apport de cette thèse est la synthèse d’une stratégie d’adaptation permettant d'assurer la convergence de la variable de glissement vers un voisinage prédéfini de zéro sans nécessiter d'informations sur les perturbations ou leurs dérivées et sans surestimation du gain. Cette stratégie est ensuite déclinée pour concevoir : deux commandes par MG d’ordre 1 et 2, une commande par mode glissant intégral, ainsi qu’une version du différenciateur de Levant. La deuxième contribution de la thèse est la mise au point de deux commandes adaptatives par MGOS discontinues. Ces deux algorithmes assurent un mode glissant d'ordre n en s’affranchissant de la connaissance de la limite supérieure de la perturbation et de sa dérivée. Enfin, afin de montrer l’efficacité des algorithmes proposés, ils sont appliqués avec succès à travers des simulations pour la commande d’un système de conversion de l’énergie éolienne et la commande d’un moteur à induction linéaire pour la cogénération. / This thesis deals with the development of novel strategies to adapt higher order sliding mode controllers and observers. The implementation of classics first order and higher order sliding mode controllers requires the knowledge of the upper bound of the disturbance or its derivative, which are often not known. The first contribution of this thesis is the design of an adaptive strategy that can ensure the convergence of the sliding variable to a predefined neighborhood of zero without requiring any information of the disturbance or its derivative and without overestimating the adaptive gain. This adaptive strategy is then declined for the design of the first order, second order and integral sliding mode controllers, and for the Levant's differentiator. The second contribution of the thesis is the development of two adaptive strategies for discontinuous higher order sliding mode control. The proposed two algorithms can provide the achievement of n-order sliding mode despite disturbances with unknown upper bounds or with unknown upper bounds of their derivatives. Finally, in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, they are successfully applied through simulations to control the wind energy conversion system and the linear induction motor system for cogeneration.

This thesis concerns biogas-operated fuel cells. Fuel cell technology may contribute to more efficient energy use, reduce emissions and also perhaps revolutionize current energy systems. The technology is, however, still immature and has not yet been implemented as dominant in any application or niche market. Research and development is currently being carried out to investigate whether fuel cells can live up to their full potential and to further advance the technology. The research of thesis contributes by exploring the potential of using fuel cells as energy converters of biogas to electricity. The work includes results from four different experimental test facilities and concerns experiments performed at cell, stack and fuel cell system levels. The studies on cell and stack level have focused on the influence of CO, CO2 and air bleed on the current distribution during transient operation. The dynamic response has been evaluated on a single cell, a segmented cell and at stack level. Two fuel cell systems, a 4 kW PEFC system and a 5 kW SOFC system have been operated on upgraded biogas. A significant outcome is that the possibility of operating both PEFCs and SOFCs on biogas has been established. No interruptions or rapid performance loss could be associated with the upgraded biogas during operation. From the studies at cell and stack level, it is clear that CO causes significant changes in the current distribution in a PEFC; air bleed may recover the uneven current distribution and also the drop in cell voltage due to CO and CO2 poisoning. The recovery of cell performance during air bleed occurs evenly over the electrode surface even when the O2 partial pressure is far too low to fully recover the CO poisoning. The O2 supplied to the anode reacts on the anode catalyst and no O2 was measured at the cell outlet for air bleed levels up to 5 %. Reformed biogas and other gases with high CO2 content are thus, from dilution and CO-poisoning perspectives, suitable for PEFC systems. The present work has enhanced our understanding of biogas-operated fuel cells and will serve as basis for future studies. / QC20100708

High penetration of wind energy requires innovations in different areas of power engineering. Methods for improving wind energy and power system interconnection, control, and operation are proposed in this dissertation. A feed-forward transient compensation control scheme is proposed to enhance the low-voltage ride-through capability of wind turbines equipped with doubly fed induction generators. Stator-voltage transient compensation terms are introduced to suppress rotor-current overshoots and torque ripples during grid faults. A dynamic stochastic optimal power flow control scheme is proposed to optimally reroute real-time active and reactive power flow in the presence of high variability and uncertainty. The performance of the proposed power flow control scheme is demonstrated in test power systems with large wind plants. A combined energy-and-reserve wind market scheme is proposed to reduce wind production uncertainty. Variable wind reserve products are created to absorb part of the wind production variation. These fast wind reserve products can then be used to regulate system frequency and improve system security.

Photo-induced charge transfer which occurs between molecules or different parts of a large molecule is the pivotal process related to performances of organic electronics. In particular, injection of charge carriers into conjugated polymers and dissociation of photo-generated excitons at the heterojunction between a donor and acceptor system are of great importance in determining the luminescence efficiency of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar energy conversion efficiency of organic solar cells, respectively. However, the complex nature of organic semiconductors as well as complicated primary processes involved in the functioning of these devices have prevented us from understanding unique characteristics of these processes and thereby engineering better materials for higher performances. In this dissertation, two different types of photo-induced (or -related) charge transfer processes occurring in organic semiconductors were investigated by using single molecule spectroscopy (SMS) techniques to unravel the complexities of these processes. The carefully designed functioning capacitor-like model devices similar to OLEDs and photovoltaic cells were fabricated where isolated single nanoparticles were introduced as an active medium to mitigate the complexities of these materials. We observed that injection of positively charged carriers (holes) into poly[2-methoxy-5-(2'-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) single nanoparticles from the carbazole hole transport layer does not occur in the absence of light. We denoted the observed hole injection in aid of light as the light-induced hole transfer mechanism (LIHT). It was revealed that the charging dynamics are highly consistent with a cooperative charging effect. In addition, the LIHT was proposed as the possible source for the formation of deep trapped hole in organic devices. Local exciton dissociation yields across a nanostructured domain between poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) (F8BT) single nanoparticles and either poly(9,9- dioctylfluorene - co - bis-N,N- (4 -butylphenyl)-bis-N,N-phenyl-1,4-phenylene diamine) (PFB) or poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-N-(4-butylphenyl)diphenylamine) (TFB) film in model photovoltaic devices was also investigated. A wide distribution of exciton dissociation yields was observed from each nanodomain due to the device geometry. The observed hysteresis in fluorescence voltage curve was ascribed to accumulated charges following charge separations. The dynamics of charge separation under the applied electric field was described in more detail. / text

Solar energy is a virtually inexhaustible energy resource, and thus, has great potential in helping meet many of our future energy requirements. Current technology used for solar energy conversion, however, is not cost effective. In addition, solar thermal power systems are also generally less efficient as compared to fossil fuel based thermal power plants. There is a large variety of systems for solar thermal power generation, each with certain advantages and disadvantages. A distinct advantage of solar thermal power generation systems is that they can be easily integrated with a storage system and/or with an auxiliary heating system (as in hybrid power systems) to provide stable and reliable power. Also, as the power block of a solar thermal plant resembles that of a conventional thermal power plant, most of the equipment and technology used is already well defined, and hence does not require major break through research for effective utilisation. Manufacturing of components, too, can be easily indigenized. A solar collector field is generally used for solar thermal energy conversion. The field converts high grade radiation energy to low grade heat energy, which will inevitably involve energy losses as per the laws of thermodynamics. The 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that a certain amount of heat energy cannot be utilised and has to be rejected as waste heat. This limits the efficiency of solar thermal energy technology. However, in many situations, the waste heat can be effectively utilized to perform refrigeration and desalination using absorption or solid sorption systems, with technologies popularly known as “polygeneration”. There is extensive research done in the area of solar collectors, including but not limiting to thermal analysis, testing of solar collectors, and economic analysis of solar collectors. Exergy and optimization analyses have also been done for certain solar collector configurations. Research on solar thermal power plants includes energy analysis at system level with certain configurations. Research containing analysis with insolation varying throughout the day is limited. Hence, there is scope for analysis incorporating diurnal variation of insolation for a solar thermal power system. This thesis centres on the thermodynamic analysis at system level of a solar thermal power system using a concentrating solar collector field and a simple Rankine cycle power generation (with steam as the working fluid) for Indian conditions. The aim is to develop a tool for thermodynamic analysis of solar thermal power systems, with a generalised approach that can also be used with different solar collector types, different heat transfer fluids in the primary loop, and also different working fluids in the secondary loop. This analysis emphasises the solar collector field and a basic sensible heat storage system, and investigates the various energy and exergy losses present. Comparisons have been made with and without a storage unit and resulting performance issues of solar thermal power plants have been studied. Differences between the system under consideration and commercially used thermal power plants have also been discussed, which brought out certain limitations of the technology currently in use. A solution from an optimization analysis has been utilized and modified for maximization of exergy generated at collector field. The analysis has been done with models incorporating equations using the laws of thermodynamics. MATLAB has been used to program and simulate the models. Solar radiation data used is from NREL’s Indian Solar Resource Data, which is obtained using their SUNY model by interpreting satellite imagery. The performance of the system has been analysed for Bangalore for four different days with different daylight durations, each day having certain differences in the incident solar radiation or insolation received. A particular solution of an optimization analysis has been modified using the simulation model developed and analysed with the objective of maximization of exergy generated at collector field. It has been found that the performance of the solar thermal power system was largely dependent on the variation of incident solar radiation. The storage system provided a stableperformance for short duration interruptions of solar radiation occurred on Autumn Equinox (23-09-2002).The duration of the interruption was within the limits of storage unit capacity. The major disruption in insolation transpired on Summer Solstice (21-06-2002) caused a significantly large drop in the solar thermal system performance; practically the system ceased to function due to lack of energy resource. Hence, the use of an auxiliary heating system hasbeen considered desirable. The absence of a storage unit has been shown to cause a significant loss in gross performance of the power system. The Rankine cycle turbine had many issues coping with a highly fluctuating energy input, and thus caused efficiency losses and even ceased power generation. A storage unit has been found to be ideal for steady power generation purposes. Some commercial configurations may lack a storage system, but they have been compensated by the auxiliary heating system to ensure stable power generation. The optimization of the solar collector determines that optimal collector temperatures vary in accordance to the incident solar radiation. Hence, the collector fluid outlet temperature must not be fixed so as to handle varying insolation for optimal exergy extraction. The optimal temperatures determined for Bangalore are around 576 K which is close to the values obtained by the simulation of the solar thermal power system. The tools for analysis and simulation of solar thermal power plants developed in this thesis is fairly generalised, as it can be adapted for various types of solar collectors and for different working fluids (other than steam), such as for Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). The model can also be easily extended to other types of power cycles such as Brayton and Stirling cycles.

With the increasing complexity of the power system, electromechanical oscillations are becoming one of the major problem. Several blackouts have been reported in the past due to insufficient damping of the oscillatory modes. The starting point to avoid catastrophic behaviors would be to simulate actual power system and study the response of the system under various outages leading to blackouts. Recently, it has been identified that appropriate modeling of the load is necessary to match the actual system behavior with the computer simulated response. This research throws some insight into the detailed load modeling and its impact on the system small signal stability. In particular, Composite load model is proposed and its effect on the system small signal stability is investigated. Modeling all the loads in a large power system would be a cumbersome job and hence the method for identifying the most sensitive load location is also proposed in the thesis. The effect of load modeling on the eigenvalue movement is also investigated. The low damped electromechanical modes are always undesirable in the large inter-connected power systems as they might get excited under some event leading to growing oscillations. Proper damping of these modes is essential for effective and reliable system operation. Power system stabilizers have been proved to be an effective way of damping these electromechanical modes. The optimal number and location of PSS to effectively damp the modes via improved Differential algorithm is proposed. Moreover, the effect of TCSC, series compensated FACTs device, on enhancing the system damping is investigated. A fixed order model matching technique is presented to design a damping controller for the TCSC. With the increasing global pressure for reducing carbon emissions, there is a great amount of interest in the renewable sources of energy, particularly Wind Energy Conversion Systems. Of all the present methods of wind generation systems, Doubly Fed Induction Generation (DFIG) based wind farms are gaining popularity. The comparison of various methods of wind generation techniques is presented. In particular, the impact of DFIG based wind farms on the system small signal stability is investigated in this work. Co-ordinated tuning of the controllers is performed using Bacterial Foraging Technique, which is another member of Evolutionary algorithms. Damping controller for the DFIG system is proposed to enhance the damping of the electromechanical modes. Results have proved the effectiveness of the control methodology. The contributions made in this thesis could be utilized to promote the further development of the damping controllers for large power systems.

With the increasing complexity of the power system, electromechanical oscillations are becoming one of the major problem. Several blackouts have been reported in the past due to insufficient damping of the oscillatory modes. The starting point to avoid catastrophic behaviors would be to simulate actual power system and study the response of the system under various outages leading to blackouts. Recently, it has been identified that appropriate modeling of the load is necessary to match the actual system behavior with the computer simulated response. This research throws some insight into the detailed load modeling and its impact on the system small signal stability. In particular, Composite load model is proposed and its effect on the system small signal stability is investigated. Modeling all the loads in a large power system would be a cumbersome job and hence the method for identifying the most sensitive load location is also proposed in the thesis. The effect of load modeling on the eigenvalue movement is also investigated. The low damped electromechanical modes are always undesirable in the large inter-connected power systems as they might get excited under some event leading to growing oscillations. Proper damping of these modes is essential for effective and reliable system operation. Power system stabilizers have been proved to be an effective way of damping these electromechanical modes. The optimal number and location of PSS to effectively damp the modes via improved Differential algorithm is proposed. Moreover, the effect of TCSC, series compensated FACTs device, on enhancing the system damping is investigated. A fixed order model matching technique is presented to design a damping controller for the TCSC. With the increasing global pressure for reducing carbon emissions, there is a great amount of interest in the renewable sources of energy, particularly Wind Energy Conversion Systems. Of all the present methods of wind generation systems, Doubly Fed Induction Generation (DFIG) based wind farms are gaining popularity. The comparison of various methods of wind generation techniques is presented. In particular, the impact of DFIG based wind farms on the system small signal stability is investigated in this work. Co-ordinated tuning of the controllers is performed using Bacterial Foraging Technique, which is another member of Evolutionary algorithms. Damping controller for the DFIG system is proposed to enhance the damping of the electromechanical modes. Results have proved the effectiveness of the control methodology. The contributions made in this thesis could be utilized to promote the further development of the damping controllers for large power systems.

The growing demand for power and increased environmental concerns gave an impetus to the growth of clean and renewable energy sources like wind, solar etc. There is a remarkable increase in the penetration of wind energy systems in the last decade and this trend is bound to increase at a much faster pace in future. This ever increasing penetration of wind power generating systems pose multi-fold challenges related to operational and stability aspects of the grid. Present day wind energy systems mostly comprise of variable speed wind generators. A large fraction of present day variable speed wind turbine generators use doubly fed induction machine (DFIM). This thesis deals with modeling and grid coordination aspects of variable speed wind gener- ators. In particular, the short coming of the existing steady state equivalent circuit of a DFIM is identified and subsequently, an accurate equivalent circuit of a DFIM is proposed. Relevant mathematical basis for the proposed model is presented. The proposed steady state equivalent circuit of a doubly fed induction machine is further validated using dynamic simulations of a standalone machine. Based on the proposed equivalent circuit, two approaches for computing the initial values of state variables of a DFIM is proposed. The first approach is a linear formulation where the losses due to resistance of the stator and rotor windings are neglected. The second approach is a non-linear formulation which takes the losses into consideration. Further, analysis is carried out on grid connected doubly fed induction generators (DFIG). A framework to incorporate DFIG based variable speed wind farms in the steady state power flow analysis is proposed. The proposed framework takes into consideration important aspects such as voltage dependent reactive power limits and mode of reactive power control of associated converters. Some of the challenges in a grid connected DFIG especially during su- persynchronous mode of operation are identified. The advantages of a non-Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) mode of operation under certain operating conditions is highlighted. Finally, aspects pertaining to coordination of grid connected variable speed wind generators are studied. A trust region framework to determine the reference values to the control loops of converters in a variable speed wind generator is proposed. The proposed framework identifies the reference values considering other reactive power controllers in the grid. Moreover, the proposed framework ensures that the steady state voltage stability margin is maximized. On the computational front, trust region algorithms ensure global convergence. The mathematical models and initialization algorithms proposed in this thesis are tested on standalone systems under various control scenarios. The algorithms proposed to incorporate a grid connected DFIG in steady state analysis tools have been tested on a sample 6-bus system and a practical 418-bus equivalent system of Indian southern grid.

Dissertation (DTech(Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2012 / The confluence of the limited resources of fossil fuels (e.g. coal, oil and natural gas), environmental degradations leading to climate change, security of supplies and fossil fuels high costs have demanded a tremendous efforts on humanity to seek for a sustainable and unlimited natural energy sources. Amongst these renewable energy sources stands out solar energy because of its ubiquitousness. Solar energy is converted to DC electricity by the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaic (PV) power systems installed in commercial and industrial buildings are a good example of distributed power generation. Here the energy consumption and production match and thus electricity taken from the grid during daytime peak hours can be reduced. This is beneficial as the transmission losses in the grid are avoided and also transmission need is reduced. The cost effectiveness of a solar energy system has hindered its wide adoption and deployment in terms of the initial capital cost even though it has a zero energy cost and very minimal operating and maintenance costs. Different governments have instituted many financial incentives for fast adoption of PV systems for both residential and commercial applications. However, all these incentives are not sustainable in the longer term forecast. For PV system to attain grid parity requires more than unsustainable approach of many governments providing time limited subsidies. The technical solution to the problem is to reduce the overall system cost through technical innovations. One such method is the adoption of transformerless inverter technology as the grid interface system. Transformerless inverter topology provides galvanic isolation through innovative inverter topology and switching strategies that eliminates problems created by not employing the service of transformer.

Submitted by Marco Antonio Oliveira da Silva (maosilva@ipen.br) on 2016-12-21T17:42:04Z No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-21T17:42:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Os catalisadores eletroquímicos binários de PtSn/C, PdSn/C e PtPd/C foram sintetizados em diferentes proporções pelo método da redução via borohidreto, posteriormente estes foram caracterizados por microscopia eletrônica de transmissão, difração de raios X, espectroscopia no infravermelho por transformada de Fourier (PtSn/C e PdSn/C) e energia dispersiva de raios X. As atividades eletroquímicas dos diferentes materiais preparados foram avaliadas por intermédio de voltametria cíclica, cronoamperometria e curvas de polarização em célula a combustível alimentada diretamente por etileno glicol em eletrólito alcalino. As curvas de densidade de potência indicaram que os catalisadores eletroquímicos contendo Sn e Pd são mais ativos para a reação de oxidação do etileno glicol, especialmente a composição 70%:30% - relação molar entre os metais suportados em carbono - dos catalisadores PtSn/C, PdSn/C e PtPd/C todos superando as medidas de potência do Pt/C. Este resultado indica que a adição de Sn e Pd favorece a oxidação do etileno glicol em meio alcalino. O melhor desempenho observado para os catalisadores eletroquímicos PtSn/C, PdSn/C e PtPd/C (70%:30%) poderia estar associado à sua maior seletividade quanto a formação de oxalato, ou seja , a formação deste produto resulta em um maior número de elétrons, por consequência em maiores valores de corrente. / Tese (Doutorado em Tecnologia Nuclear) / IPEN/T / Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares - IPEN-CNEN/SP