The Cal Poly Sustainable Power for Electrical Resources (SuPER) project is a solar power DC distribution system designed to autonomously manage and supply the energy needs of a single family off-the-grid home. The following thesis describes the improvement and re-design of a MATLAB Simulink model for the Cal Poly SuPER system. This model includes a photovoltaic (PV) array, a lead-acid gel battery with temperature effects, a wind turbine model, a re-designed DC-DC converter, a DC microgrid, and multiple loads. This thesis will also include several control algorithms such as a temperature controlled thermoelectric (T.E.) cooler, intelligent load switching, and an intelligent power source selector. Furthermore, a seven day simulation and evaluation of the results are presented. This simulation is an important tool for further system development, re-design, and long term system performance prediction.

Inverse analysis of nonlinear dynamic systems is an important area of research in the eld of structural health monitoring for civil engineering structures. Structural damage usually involves localized nonlinear behaviors of dynamic systems that evolve into different classes of nonlinearity as well as change system parameter values. Numerous parametric modal analysis techniques (e.g., eigensystem realization algorithm and subspace identification method) have been developed for system identification of multi-degree-of-freedom dynamic systems. However, those methods are usually limited to linear systems and known for poor sensitivity to localized damage. On the other hand, non-parametric identification methods (e.g., artificial neural networks) are advantageous to identify time-varying nonlinear systems due to unpredictable damage. However, physical interpretation of non-parametric identification results is not as straightforward as those of the parametric methods. In this study, the Multidegree-ofFreedom Restoring Force Method (MRFM) is employed as a semi-parametric nonlinear identi- fication method to take the advantages of both the parametric and non-parametric identification methods. The MRFM is validated using two realistic experimental nonlinear dynamic tests: (i) largescale shake table tests using building models with different foundation types, and (ii) impact test using wind blades. The large-scale shake table test was conducted at Tongji University using 1:10 scale 12-story reinforced concrete building models tested on three different foundations, including pile, box and fixed foundation. The nonlinear dynamic signatures of the building models collected from the shake table tests were processed using MRFM (i) to investigate the effects of foundation types on nonlinear behavior of the superstructure and (ii) to detect localized damage during the shake table tests. Secondly, the MRFM was applied to investigate the applicability of this method to wind turbine blades. Results are promising, showing a high level of nonlinearity of the system and how the MRFM can be applied to wind-turbine blades. Fuiii ture studies were planned for the comparison of physical characteristic of this blade with blades created made of other material.

Offshore floating wind turbines represent the future of wind energy. However, significant challenges must be overcome before these systems can be widely used. Because of the dynamics of offshore floating wind turbines -- surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch, and yaw -- and the resulting interactions between the rotor and generated wake, the aerodynamic analysis methods and design codes that have found wide use throughout the wind energy industry may be inadequate. Application of these techniques to offshore floating wind turbine aerodynamics may result in off-optimal designs, effectively handicapping these next-generation systems, thereby minimizing their full potential. This dissertation will demonstrate that the aerodynamics of offshore floating wind turbines are sufficiently different from conventional offshore and onshore wind turbines, warranting the use of higher fidelity analysis approaches. It will outline the development and validation of a free vortex wake code, the Wake Induced Dynamics Simulator, or WInDS, which uses a more physically realistic Lagrangian approach to modeling complex rotor-wake interactions. Finally, results from WInDS simulations of various offshore floating wind turbines under different load conditions will be presented. The simulation results indicate that offshore floating wind turbine aerodynamics are more complex than conventional offshore or onshore wind turbines and require higher fidelity analysis approaches to model adequately. Additionally, platform pitching modes appear to drive the most aerodynamically-significant motions, followed by yawing modes. Momentum balance approaches are shown to be unable to accurately model these dynamic systems, and the associated dynamic inflow methods respond to velocity changes at the rotor incorrectly. Future offshore floating wind turbine designs should strive to either minimize platform motions or be complementarily optimized, via higher fidelity aerodynamic analysis techniques, to account for them. It is believed that this dissertation is the first in-depth study of offshore floating wind turbine aerodynamics and the applicability of various analysis methods.

Numerical simulations using CFD methods are performed for wind turbine applications. The aim of the project is to get a better understanding of the wake behaviour, which is needed since today’s industrial design codes for wind power applications are based on the BEM (Blade Element Momentum) method. This method has been extended with a number of empirical corrections not based on physical flow features. The importance of accurate design models does also increase as the turbines become larger. Therefore, the research is today shifting toward a more fundamental approach, aiming at understanding basic aerodynamic mechanisms. The result from the CFD simulation is evaluated and special interest is given to the circulation and the position of vortices. From these evaluations, it will hopefully be possible to improve the engineering methods and base them, to a greater extent, on physical features instead of empirical corrections. The simulations are performed using the program ”EllipSys3D” developed at DTU (The Technical University of Denmark). The Actuator Line Method is used, where the blade is represented by a line instead of a large number of panels. The forces on that line are introduced by using tabulated aerodynamic coefficients. In this way, the computer resource is used more efficiently since the number of node points locally around the blade is decreased, and they can instead be concentrated in the wake behind the blades. An evaluation method to extract values of the circulation from the wake flow field is developed. The result shows agreement with classical theorems from Helmholtz, from which it follows that the wake tip vortex has the same circulation as the maximum value of the bound circulation on the blade. / QC 20101203

Distributed generators (DGs) with integration of renewable resources (RRs) such as photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine have been widely considered to reduce the dependency on conventional power generation systems along with enhancement of the quality and sustainability of the power system. Recently, DC microgrid has gained popularity in many real-world applications such as rural electrification due to its simplicity and low power losses. However, the power variability of renewable resources and continuous change in load demand imposes risks of power mismatch in standalone DC systems that increase the chances of stability and reliability issues. Therefore, complementary generation and/or storage systems are coupled with standalone DC microgrid to mitigate the power fluctuations and maintain a power balance in the system. This dissertation presents a power management strategy (PMS) based on model predictive control (MPC) for a standalone DC microgrid. A control scheme for a standalone DC microgrid system with RRs, storage, and load is desired to have the capability of effective power management that maximizes the extraction of energy from renewable generators, minimizes the transients in the system during disturbances, and protects the storage from over/under charging conditions. As a part of the proposed MPC, an optimization problem is formulated to meet the voltage performance in the system with respect to operating conditions and constraints. The proposed PMS uses the ARIMA prediction method to forecast the load and environmental parameters. The predicted parameters are utilized to estimate the future performance of the system by solving the dynamic model of the system, and a cost function is optimized to generate suitable control sequences. This research also presents detailed mathematical models of the considered systems. This dissertation presents an extensive simulation-based analysis of the proposed approach. With the proposed control, maximum utilization of the renewable generators has been achieved, and the DC bus voltage is regulated at nominal value with minimum transients under various load/environmental disturbances. Moreover, the research investigates the proposed MPC based on ARIMA prediction by comparing the performance of different types of prediction methods. The dissertation also measures the effectiveness of the proposed MPC by comparing its performance with a conventional PI controller.

The events of September 11, 2001, seemed to many to presage the end of the skyscraper as an urban form. Some 15 years later, the skyscraper is more prevalent than ever before, owing to its unique advantages over other building forms in an urban, environmental, and sociological context. Skyscrapers are rising ever higher, pushing the limits of architecture and engineering. In 2001 there were 23 buildings over 1,000 feet in height. As of this writing there are 173 buildings over 1,000 feet completed or under construction, with 300 more in various phases of proposal. Despite their enormous initial cost in both capital and energy, the skyscraper maximizes the use of constricted urban space and provides enormous opportunities for technological and sociological innovation which, despite more that 100 years of skyscraper construction, are only just beginning to be realized. This thesis will explore a number of as-yet unrealized possibilities for skyscraper development to prognosticate and articulate future typologies designed to address increasing problems of energy efficiency, population density and disaster preparedness. As the human population grows, and more people move to the cities, larger and larger buildings will be necessary to house them at densities sufficient to ensure energy efficiency and minimize sprawl. The skyscraper is uniquely suited to meet these demands. / Master of Architecture

Fossil fuel consumption throughout the world is drawing attention to the need for alternative energy sources to provide for the large demand for energy. It is becoming more apparent everyday that fossil fuels are unreliable sources of energy due to the volatile pricing of such commodities as well as the toll that these energy sources take on the environment. Fossil fuels are non-renewable sources of energy that when burned to create energy produce bi-products that are extremely harmful to the global environment. Today, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy are playing larger roles as sources of electricity and are providing new jobs as well as research opportunities both in academia and in industry. It is for this reason that wind turbine energy harvesting is the topic of this thesis and how the efficiency of wind turbine power conversion systems can be improved to become a more viable source of energy. Large wind turbines, along with their power conversion electronics, exist today for the sole purpose of serving a large population of consumers with "green" electricity. Unfortunately, systems designed for low power wind turbines do not utilize advanced methods of maximizing energy draw from wind turbines both from hardware and software point of views. This theses is presents a method of efficient energy extraction and conversion from low power wind turbines to charge lead ac id batteries.

Dynamic Substructuring is a powerful tool for simplification of the analysis of complex structures and it has been well established along the years in analytical calculations by means of the Craig-Bampton technique. Recently, a new branch of substructuring, the Experimental Dynamic Substrucuring, appeared as a promising field of research for the engineering community. This area presents several intrinsic difficulties, evincing a need to develop the traditional substructuring methods towards obtaining better results using the experimental approach. In this scenery, the Transmission Simulator technique emerges as an instrument for potential improvement of the achieved results. This work represents a study on the use of the Transmission Simulator technique in the analysis of an Ampair A600 wind turbine blade subjected to loads at the interface to the hub, and it is a part of the benchmarking studies of SEM (Society of Experimental Mechanics). The work consisted of collecting experimental data via vibration tests of a single blade connected to different sizes of transmission simulators. After that, a mathematical representation of the blade was obtained via subtraction of the effect of the transmission simulators via substructuring technique. The computed model was subsequently coupled to a model of the remainder of the wind turbine (the hub plus two blades), and the results were compared to data acquired in tests of the whole assembly. The final findings did not reflect the theory prospects and further investigation is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the used methodology.

Oberschwingungen als ein Merkmal der Elektroenergiequalität gewinnen durch die starke Netzintegration leistungselektronisch geregelter Anlagen wie Windenergieanlagen und nichtlineare Lasten zunehmend an Bedeutung. Bestehende Normen entsprechen nicht den zukünftigen Erfordernissen des Elektroenergiesystems und bedürfen diesbezüglich einer Überarbeitung. In der Arbeit werden wesentliche Einflussfaktoren auf das Oberschwingungsverhalten von Windparks identifiziert, beschrieben und modelliert. Dabei wird der stochastische Charakter der Oberschwingungen mithilfe von probabilistischen Ansätzen erfasst. Des Weiteren wird ein neuer Ansatz zur Untersuchung der Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Windpark und dem vorgelagerten Netz entwickelt. Der Ansatz ermöglicht, die vom Windpark verursachte Änderung der Oberschwingungsspannung am Netzanschlusspunkt zu ermitteln. Diese Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zur Verbesserung bestehender Normen für die Anbindung von Windparks. / Harmonics, as one of the power quality criteria, are increasingly gaining attention due to the progressive contribution of renewable energy resources and the application of the nonlinear load in the power system. Current standards do not conform to the future requirements of the power system, thus requiring a revision. In this work, main influence factors on the harmonic behavior of wind farms are identified, explained, and modelled. Thereby, the stochastic nature of harmonics is taken into account using probabilistic approaches. Moreover, a novel approach is developed to investigate the interaction between the wind farm and the upstream grid. With the aid of this approach, it is possible to determine the voltage change caused by the wind farm at the point of connection. This work contributes to improve the existing standards for the connection of wind farms.

Wind and solar technologies have experienced rapid market growth recently as a result of the growing interest for implementation of renewable energy. However, the intermittency of wind and solar power is a major obstacle to their broader use. The additional risks of unexpected interruptions and mismatch with demand have hindered the expansion of these two primary renewable resources. The goal of this research is to analyze an integrated energy system that includes a novel configuration of wind and solar coupled with two storage methods to make both wind and solar sources dispatchable during peak demand, thereby enabling their broader use. Named DSWiSS for Dispatchable Solar Wind Storage System, the proposed system utilizes compressed air energy storage (CAES) that is driven from wind energy and thermal storage supplied by concentrating solar thermal power in order to achieve this desired dispatchability. Although DSWiSS mimics the operation of a typical CAES facility, the replacement of energy derived from fossil fuels with energy generated from renewable resources makes this system unique. While current CAES facilities use off peak electricity to power their compressors, this system uses power from wind turbines. Also, rather than using natural gas for heating of the compressed air before its expansion through a turbine, DSWiSS uses solar thermal energy and thermal storage. For this research, two models were created; the first is a dynamic model of a 1.5 MW variable speed wind turbine, programmed in PSCAD/EMTDC, that utilizes rotor resistive control to maintain rated power output. This model simulates the dynamic response of the wind turbine to changing wind conditions as well as the nominal performance parameters at all wind speeds. The second model is a steady state thermodynamic simulation of the turbomachinery power unit in the DSWiSS facility. By assuming conditions similar to those of a currently operating CAES facility in McIntosh, Alabama, the model calculates the performance parameters of DSWiSS and estimates the relative energy input requirements. By combining these models with a levelized lifetime cost analysis estimates of the power system performance and the cost of energy for the DSWiSS facility were estimated. The combination of these components yielded an efficiency greater than 46% for the main power block and a nearly equal utilization of both renewable resources. It was also estimated that the overall system is only slightly more expensive per unit of electricity generated than the current technologies employed today, namely coal, nuclear, and natural gas, but is comparable to a stand-alone solar thermal facility. However, this economic analysis, though accurate with regard to the technologies chosen, will not be complete until cost values can be placed on some of the externalities associated with power generation such as fuel cost volatility, national security, and emissions. / text