The Grid has been recognised as the next-generation distributed computing paradigm by seamlessly integrating heterogeneous resources across administrative domains as a single virtual system. There are an increasing number of scientific and business projects that employ Grid computing technologies for large-scale resource sharing and collaborations. Early adoptions of Grid computing technologies have custom middleware implemented to bridge gaps between heterogeneous computing backbones. These custom solutions form the basis to the emerging Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA), which aims at addressing common concerns of Grid systems by defining a set of interoperable and reusable Grid services. One of common concerns as defined in OGSA is the Grid accounting service. The main objective of the Grid accounting service is to ensure resources to be shared within a Grid environment in an accountable manner by metering and logging accurate resource usage information. This thesis discusses the origins and fundamentals of Grid computing and accounting service in the context of OGSA profile. A prototype was developed and evaluated based on OGSA accounting-related standards enabling sharing accounting data in a multi-Grid environment, the World-wide Large Hadron Collider Grid (WLCG). Based on this prototype and lessons learned, a generic middleware solution was also implemented as a toolkit that eases migration of existing accounting system to be standard compatible.

Most of the world’s electricity is being generated through conventional sources of energy like coal and nuclear. People are realizing the dire effect of using these fuels, and the amount of CO2 being released into the environment. Therefore, in recent year there has been a shift in emphasis towards cleaner ways of generating electricity. One such recent trend is solar photovoltaics (PV), which has seen rapid growth over the years. This ever-increasing trend of adopting PV system allows consumers to be producers or “Prosumers”. Due to the irregular production capability of solar PV, the need for an energy storage system like a battery bank is on the rise as well. This report evaluates how solar PV can be used in combination with a battery bank to supply the annual electricity demand for a household with little to no support from the grid. The building is assumed to be located in Bangalore, India. The energy demand for the household is estimated based on the requirements of a basic Indian house standard. The size and configuration of each component have been done with regards to the total load demand. Furthermore, the cost of the whole system is estimated in order to evaluate the feasibility of the grid-tied system from an economic perspective. The results show that a PV system consisting of four 270W solar panels, a battery bank of eight150Ah lead-acid batteries and a 48V 4kW inverter is required to meet the annual energy demand of the house. The results show that from a technical standpoint, the above-mentioned technology is feasible. The results from the economic evaluation show that the localized cost of energy(LCOE) for the system is ₹6.01/kWh or € 0.078/kWh or 0.84SEK/kWh and the payback time for the given system is 16.19 years. On the bright side, there are new technological advancements in the PV field every day, which could mean that an energy system of this type can be an achievable and practical alternative. Most of the world’s electricity is being generated through conventional sources of energy like coal and nuclear. People are realizing the dire effect of using these fuels, and the amount of CO2 being released into the environment. Therefore, in recent year there has been a shift in emphasis towards cleaner ways of generating electricity. One such recent trend is solar photovoltaics (PV), which has seen rapid growth over the years. This ever-increasing trend of adopting PV system allows consumers to be producers or “Prosumers”. Due to the irregular production capability of solar PV, the need for an energy storage system like a battery bank is on the rise as well. This report evaluates how solar PV can be used in combination with a battery bank to supply the annual electricity demand for a household with little to no support from the grid. The building is assumed to be located in Bangalore, India. The energy demand for the household is estimated based on the requirements of a basic Indian house standard. The size and configuration of each component have been done with regards to the total load demand. Furthermore, the cost of the whole system is estimated in order to evaluate the feasibility of the grid-tied system from an economic perspective. The results show that a PV system consisting of four 270W solar panels, a battery bank of eight 150Ah lead-acid batteries and a 48V 4kW inverter is required to meet the annual energy demand of the house. The results show that from a technical standpoint, the above-mentioned technology is feasible. The results from the economic evaluation show that the localized cost of energy (LCOE) for the system is ₹6.01/kWh or € 0.078/kWh or 0.84SEK/kWh and the payback time for the given system is 16.19 years. On the bright side, there are new technological advancements in the PV field every day, which could mean that an energy system of this type can be an achievable and practical alternative.

n the electrical power grid, the power load is not constant but continuouslychanging. This depends on many different factors, among which the habits of theconsumers, the yearly seasons and the hour of the day. The continuous change inenergy consumption requires the power grid to be flexible. If the energy provided bygenerators is lower than the demand, this is usually compensated by using renewablepower sources or stored energy until the power generators have adapted to the newdemand. However, if buffers are depleted the output may not meet the demandedpower and could cause power outages. The currently adopted practice in the indus-try is based on configuring the grid depending on some expected power draw. Thisanalysis is usually performed at a high level and provide only some basic load aggre-gate as an output. In this thesis, we aim at investigating techniques that are able topredict the behaviour of loads with fine-grained precision. These techniques couldbe used as predictors to dynamically adapt the grid at run time. We have investigatedthe field of time series forecasting and evaluated and compared different techniquesusing a real data set of the load of the Swedish power grid recorded hourly throughyears. In particular, we have compared the traditional ARIMA models to a neuralnetwork and a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to see which of these tech-niques had the lowest forecasting error in our scenario. Our results show that theLSTM model outperformed the other tested models with an average error of 6,1%.

Depuis quelques années de nombreux modèles de véhicules électriques et hybrides rechargeables sont disponibles à la vente. Les prévisions annoncent des niveaux de pénétration importants pour ces prochaines années. En effet, l’État français a annoncé deux millions de véhicules électrifiés pour 2020. Les véhicules électriques impactent les réseaux d’électricité en se rechargeant, c’est alors que les flux électriques dans les réseaux évoluent. Cette recharge qui induit un changement du dimensionnement du réseau est abordée dans ce manuscrit, qui s’attache à évaluer ce changement. De plus, avec le développement de la thématique des “smart grid”, les véhicules électrifiés peuvent avoir un intérêt pour la conduite du système électrique. Cette étude a pour objectif s’attachera aussi à tenter de déterminer l’équilibre entre intérêts des véhicules électrifiés dans ce contexte et difficultés (sous la forme de coûts) qu’ils pourraient rencontrer s’ils participaient à la conduite du système.L’impact des véhicules électrifiés se concentre principalement sur les réseaux de distribution d’électricité. Dans les réseaux de distribution d’électricité, les lignes et les câbles sont des infrastructures indispensables. Alors que de nombreuses études s’intéressent au dimensionnement des transformateurs du réseau d’électricité, peu d’entre elles analysent les lignes et les câbles du réseau. Une volonté de combler ce manque est alors apparue. Ce manuscrit traite la problématique du dimensionnement des conducteurs, des lignes et des câbles du réseau de distribution d’électricité. Les véhicules électrifiés peuvent également être utilisés comme moyen de stockage de l’électricité, afin d’améliorer la conduite des réseaux d’électricité. L’étude s’intéresse également à l’évaluation de l’impact sur les conducteurs de l’utilisation des véhicules électriques et hybrides rechargeables comme moyen de stockage (donc comme moyen de conduite du système). / In recent years many models of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are available for sale. The forecasts predict high levels of penetration in the coming years. Indeed, the French government announced two million electric vehicles by 2020. Electric vehicles impact the electric grid by recharging, changing electricity flows in the grid. Electric vehicles charging changes the manner of sizing the grid which is the topic of this manuscript. Moreover, with the development of the smart grids, electric vehicles may have an interest as actor of the electrical system. This study also focuses on trying to determine the balance between interests of electrified vehicles in this context and challenges (in the form of costs) they might encounter if they are involved in the operation of the electric system.The impact of electric vehicles mainly focuses on the distribution grid lines and cables are a major infrastructure of the distribution grid. While many studies focus on electric transformers sizing, few of them analyze the lines and cables of the grid. A desire to fill that gap then appeared. This manuscript deals with the problem of sizing lines' and cables' conductors of the electric distribution grid. Electric vehicles can also be used as electricity storage device to improve the operation of electricity networks. The study also assesses the impact on grid conductors of electric vehicles use for storage (i.e. as a means for operating the system).

É um resultado conhecido que em Data Grids, onde o processamento envolve grandes quantidades de dados, pode ser mais eficaz escalonar os processos para execução nos sites que já dispõem dos dados do que transferir os dados para um site onde o processo que irá necessitar deles foi escalonado. Os estudos existentes se baseiam em pequenas quantidades de sites, com conhecimento centralizado sobre o estado dos diversos sites. Essa opção não é escalável para Grids com grande número de participantes. Este trabalho analisa versões distribuídas com informação local para os algoritmos de escalonamento de processo e replicação de dados, mostrando o efeito das topologias de interconexão de sites no desempenho desses. É observado que, considerando a existência apenas de informações locais devido às restrições topologicas, resultados diferentes quanto aos melhores algoritmos de escalonamento de processos e replicação de dados são encontrados. / It is a known result that in Data Grids, where the processing involves large amounts of data, can be more effective schedule processes to run on sites that already have the data than transfering data to a site where the process that will require them was installed. The existing studies are based on small numbers of sites, with centralized knowledge about the state of the various sites. This option is not scalable for grids with large numbers of participants. This paper will propose distributed versions with local information for process scheduling algorithms and data replication, showing the effect of interconnect topologies on the performance of these sites. It is observed that, considering the existence of only local information due to topological constraints, different results related to the best scheduling algorithms and data replication processes are found.

Pesquisas em sistemas paralelos e distribuídos de alto desempenho apresentam limitações no que se refere a análise, projeto, implementação e execução automática e transparente de aplicações. Essas limitações motivaram o projeto do MidHPC (do inglês Middleware for High Performance Computing, ou seja, Middleware para Computação de Alto Desempenho), que balanceia transparente e automaticamente cargas de trabalho considerando a capacidade dos recursos computacionais e o comportamento das aplicações envolvendo: processamento, acesso a disco, memória e rede. Para utilizar todo o potencial do MidHPC, aplicações devem ser escritas utilizando o modelo de programação concorrente, tal como o padrão POSIX de threads (pthreads). Aplicações desenvolvidas seguindo esse modelo de programação podem ser executadas em ambientes de Grid sem alteração de código fonte ou recompilação. Durante a execução, tarefas de uma mesma aplicação paralela comunicam-se, transparentemente, por meio de um sistema de memória compartilhada distribuída. O objetivo deste trabalho foi desenvolver alguns dos módulos do projeto MidHPC e integrar demais ferramentas que haviam sido previamente desenvolvidas pelo grupo. Este trabalho permite aplicar, em ambientes reais, todos os conceitos de escalonamento de processos estudados e desenvolvidos durante o projeto MidHPC / Current researches on parallel and distributed systems present limitations regarding the analysis, design, implementation and automatic execution of high performance applications. Those limitations motivated the design of MidHPC (Middleware for High Performance Computing), which transparently and automatically balances workloads considering computing resources capacities and application behavior such as: processing, network, memory and disc accesses. In order to use all of the MidHPC potential, applications must be developed following the concurrent programming model, using the POSIX thread standard (pthreads). Applications developed according to this programming model can be executed in the Grid environment with no source code modification nor recompilation. During the execution, tasks of the same application communicate, transparently, using a distributed shared memory system. The objective of this master thesis was to develop modules of the MidHPC project and integrate tools that were previously developed by the research group. This work allows applying, in real-world environments, all process scheduling concepts studied and developed during the MidHPC project

Determinar quais são os aparelhos eletrônicos de uma residência que possuem maior influência na conta de luz não é tarefa trivial. As Redes de Sensores Sem Fios (RSSF) auxiliam os usuários nessa tarefa, permitindo descobrir se há algum tipo de desperdício no ambiente monitorado e assim, auxiliá-los a fazer as devidas correções. Por isso, é fundamental usar nas smart grids métodos que detectam novidades, também conhecido como anomalias , de forma individual e autônoma, para os usuários quando algo anômalo surge no consumo de energia dos equipamentos eletrônicos. Tais anomalias podem surgir, por exemplo, quando um equipamento consome energia acima do esperado, o que pode indicar um defeito. Nesse contexto, este trabalho propõe um método inteligente, nomeado como Novelty Detection Power Meter (NodePM), para detectar as novidades no consumo de energia dos equipamentos eletrônicos monitorados por uma smart grid. O NodePM detecta as novidades considerando a entropia de cada equipamento monitorado, a qual é calculada com base em um modelo de cadeia de markov que é gerado através de um algoritmo de aprendizado de máquina. Para tanto, o NodePM é integrado a uma plataforma de monitoramento remoto de consumo de energia, que consiste de uma RSSF associada a uma aplicação em nuvem. Para validar o desempenho do NodePM foram feitos experimentos utilizando a análise de variância e testes paramétricos e não-paramétricos. Os resultados de tais experimentos, obtidos mediante a análise estatística, evidenciou a viabilidade do NodePM na plataforma desenvolvida / It is not a simple task to determine which pieces of elevtronic equipment have the greatest influence on the electricity bill. The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) assist users in this task, allowing to discover if there is any type of a waste in a monitored environment and thus, help them to take proper actions. Hence, it is of crucial importance to use intelligent methods in the smart grids for a novelty detection and to inform the users in an individual and autonomous way when some anomaly has occurred in the energy consumption of electronic equipment. These anomalies can arise, for instance, when a piece of equipment consumes more energy than expected. In this context, we propose an intelligent method, named the Novelty Detection Power Meter (NodePM), to detect the novelties in the energy consumption of electonic equipment monitored by a smart grid. The NodePM detects the novelties considering the entropy of each device monitored, which is calculed based on a Markov chain model that is generated through a machine learning algorithm. For this end, the NodePM is integrated into a platform for the remote monitoring of energy consumption, which consists of a WSN associated with a cloud application. To validate the performance of the NodePM, experiments were done using analysis of variance and parametric and non-parametric tests. The result of these tests, which were obtained from a statistical analysis, provided evidence of the feasibility of the NodePM in the platform that was developed

As necessidades computacionais de experimentos científicos muitas vezes exigem computadores potentes. Uma forma alternativa de obter esse processamento é aproveitar o processamento ocioso de computadores pessoais de modo voluntário. Essa técnica é conhecida como computação voluntária e possui grande potencial na ajuda aos cientistas. No entanto existem diversos fatores que podem reduzir sua eficiência quando aplicada a experimentos científicos complexos, por exemplo, aqueles que envolvem processamento de longa duração, uso de dados de entrada ou saída muito grandes, etc. Na tentativa de solucionar alguns desses problemas surgiram abordagens que aplicam conceitos de computação ponto-a-ponto. Neste projeto foram especificados, desenvolvidos e testados um ambiente e um escalonador de atividades que aplicam conceitos de computação ponto-a-ponto à execução de workflows com computação voluntária. Quando comparado com a execução local de atividades e com a computação voluntária tradicional houve melhoras em relação ao tempo de execução (até 22% de redução quando comparada com a computação voluntária tradicional nos testes mais complexos) e em alguns casos também houve uma redução no consumo de banda de upload do servidor de até 62%. / The computational needs of scientific experiments often require powerful computers. One alternative way to obtain this processing power is taking advantage of the idle processing of personal computers as volunteers. This technique is known as volunteer computing and has great potential in helping scientists. However, there are several issues which can reduce the efficiency of this approach when applied to complex scientific experiments, such as, the ones with long processing time, very large input or output data, etc. In an attempt to solve these problems some approaches based on P2P concepts arisen. In this project a workflow execution environment and a scheduler of activities were specified, developed and tested applying P2P concepts in the workflows execution using volunteer computing. When compared with the local execution of activities and traditional volunteer computing was the execution time was improved (until 22% of reduction when compared with the traditional volunteer computing in the most complex tests) and in some cases there was also a reduction of the server upload bandwidth use of until 62%.

The development and numerical implementation of a three-dimensional Particle-In-Cell (PIC) methodology on unstructured Voronoi-Delauney tetrahedral grids is presented. Charge assignment and field interpolation weighting schemes of zero- and first-order are formulated based on the theory of long-range constraints for three-dimensional unstructured grids. The algorithms for particle motion, particle tracing, particle injection, and loading are discussed. Solution to Poisson's equation is based on a finite-volume formulation that takes advantage of the Voronoi-Delauney dual. The PIC methodology and code are validated by application to the problem of current collection by cylindrical Langmuir probes in stationary and moving collisionless plasmas. Numerical results are compared favorably with previous numerical and analytical solutions for a wide range of probe radius to Debye length ratios, probe potentials, and electron to ion temperature ratios. A methodology for evaluation of the heating, slowing-down and deflection times in 3D PIC simulations is presented. An extensive parametric evaluation is performed and the effects of the number of computational particles per cell, the ratio of cell-edge to Debye length, and timestep are investigated. The unstructured PIC code is applied to the simulation of Field Emission Array (FEA) cathodes. Electron injection conditions are obtained from a Field Emission microtip model and the simulation domain includes the FEA cathode and anode. Currents collected by the electrodes are compared to theoretical values. Simulations show the formation of the virtual cathode and three-dimensional effects under certain injection conditions. The unstructured PIC code is also applied to the simulation of a micro-Retarding Potential Analyzer. For simple cases the current at the collector plate is compared favorably with theoretical predictions. The simulations show the complex structure of the potential inside the segmented microchannel, the phase space of plasma species and the space-charge effects not captured by the theory.

The value grid model proposes a complex framework to analyse and understand value creatingactivities among different actors. This literature review is focusing on explaining the evolutionof the value grid model, thus explaining the following theories: (1) supply chain, (2) valuechain, (3) value system, (4) value network, (5) knowledge value chain, (6) value grid model.By underlining the significant changes in the level of business complexity, the importance forthe value grid model is explained. The model is based upon three dimensions, that when appliedcan enable a company to enhance its performance and leverage its own competitive advantage.