Electricity is directly linked to the economy of a country: when electricity is limited and the price for electricity is very high, the high electricity price will have a negative influence on the economy of the country. Owing to the increasing power shortage in the world, and South Africa in particular, today, the need for reliable and economical electricity has risen drastically. The 100 MWth (40 MWe) PEPER power plant is a possible alternative that will help fight the lack of reliable, clean and affordable electricity in the world today. Owing to the small consumption area of the PEPER power plant, each city, mine and industry, for example, can have its own PEPER power plant in order to ensure reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity. This dissertation presents a case study and the relevant economic model for the PEPER power plant in order to determine whether the PEPER power plant may be considered as a possible electricity source. The production costs of the PEPER are presented in US$/kWh and compared with the industrial and household electricity costs (in US$/kWh) of various countries. This is done in order to determine whether it will be economically feasible to construct a First-of-a-kind (FOAK) or Nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) PEPER power plant in the industrial and household sectors of a selected country. In the economic model of the PEPER plant, the fixed capital investment costs for a FOAK PEPER plant were estimated to be US$367,199,411 and the fixed capital investment costs for a NOAK (eighth) PEPER plant were estimated to be US$238,429,665. The working capital for the first two years of the PEPER plant’s lifetime was estimated to be US$17,228,740. The production cost of the PEPER plant was estimated to be 0.038 US$/kWh. The sensitivity analysis conducted demonstrated that FOAK PEPER plants could be established in countries in which the electricity income is 0.145 US$/kWh or more. NOAK PEPER plants (all the PEPER plants constructed after the eighth PEPER Techno-economic analysis of the 100 MWth PEPER plant Confidential 3 plant is erected) could be established in countries with an electricity income of 0.10 US$/kWh or more. The PEPER plant presented here could be used: 1. as a training tool; 2. to test fuels and materials; 3. to accumulate high temperature nuclear data; and 4. as an electricity source for the industrial and household sectors of selected countries. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Nuclear Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1954. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1954. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-66). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1982.

Report (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 53). Also available via the Internet.

The rapid electrification through natural gas in Mexico; the interest of the country to mitigate the effects of climate change; and the opportunity for rolling out Enhanced Oil Recovery at national level requires an important R&D effort to develop nationally relevant CCS technology in natural gas combined cycle power plants. Post-combustion carbon dioxide capture at gas-fired power plants is identified and proposed as an effective way to reduce CO2 emissions generated by the electricity sector in Mexico. In particular, gas-fired power plants with carbon dioxide capture and the sequential combustion of supplementary natural gas in the heat recovery steam generator can favourably increase the production of carbon dioxide, compared to a conventional configuration. This could be attractive in places with favourable conditions for enhanced oil recovery and where affordable natural gas prices will continue to exist, such as Mexico and North America. Sequential combustion makes use of the excess oxygen in gas turbine exhaust gas to generate additional CO2, but, unlike in conventional supplementary firing, allows keeping gas temperatures in the heat recovery steam generator below 820°C, avoiding a step change in capital costs. It marginally decreases relative energy requirements for solvent regeneration and amine degradation. Power plant models integrated with capture and compression process models of Sequential Supplementary Firing Combined Cycle (SSFCC) gas-fired units show that the efficiency penalty is 8.2% points LHV compared to a conventional natural gas combined cycle power plant with capture. The marginal thermal efficiency of natural gas firing in the heat recovery steam generator can increase with supercritical steam generation to reduce the efficiency penalty to 5.7% points LHV. Although the efficiency is lower than the conventional configuration, the increment in the power output of the combined steam cycle leads a reduction of the number of gas turbines, at a similar power output to that of a conventional natural gas combined cycle. This has a positive impact on the number of absorbers and the capital costs of the post-combustion capture plant by reducing the total volume of flue gas by half on a normalised basis. The relative reduction of overall capital costs is, respectively, 9.1% and 15.3% for the supercritical and the subcritical combined cycle configurations with capture compared to a conventional configuration. The total revenue requirement, a metric combining levelised cost of electricity and revenue from EOR, shows that, at gas prices of 2$/MMBTU and for CO2 selling price from 0 to 50 $/tonneCO2, subcritical and supercritical sequential supplementary firing presents favourably at 47.3-26 $/MWh and 44.6-25 $/MWh, respectively, compared with a conventional NGCC at 49.5-31.7 $/MWh. When operated at part-load, these configurations show greater operational flexibility by utilising the additional degree of freedom associated with the combustion of natural gas in the HRSG to change power output according to electricity demand and to ensure continuity of CO2 supply when exposed to variation in electricity prices. The optimisation of steady state part-load performance shows that reducing output by adjusting supplementary fuel keeps the gas turbine operating at full load and maximum efficiency when the net power plant output is reduced from 100% to 50%. For both subcritical and supercritical combined cycles, the thermal efficiency at part-load is optimised, in terms of efficiency, with sliding pressure operation of the heat recovery steam generator. Fixed pressure operation is proposed as an alternative for supercritical combined cycles to minimise capital costs and provide fast response rates with acceptable performance levels.

Across cities in America and the world old buildings are retired to the fate of demolition. The once glorious piece of architecture are seen as unwanted, eyesores and just not fit for today's needs. This thesis seeks to show that with an adaptive-reuse approach, one can restore the 'lost glory' of such old buildings and even add new undiscovered value to its performance and architectural richness. / Master of Architecture

The aim of this diploma work has been to work up a first study dealing with possibilities of enlargement of Slavětice substation with the new sources of Dukovany power-plant (EDU). In this work I am mentioning the linking of 400 kV Slavětice substation into the electricity system in Czech Republic and its coupling into the west-European UCTE system and I am also itemizing the basic data of neighbouring substations. Further I am describing the current state of 400 kV and 110 kV substations in Slavětice, their parameters and scheme. In this work I am mentioning basic information of nuclear reactor piles, coming into consideration for the prospective new pile construction in the premises of Dukovany substation and also reflections about possibilities of bringing out power of this new pile. In the following part of my diploma work there are stated proposals of different versions for enlarging the Slavětice 400 kV substation by a new outlet of new EDU source and the eventual overhead-line construction. I am mentioning the necessary substation arrangements for each proposed version, the scheme, eventually the proposal how to lay-out the new lines. Further there is stated here a proposal of outgoing feeder switchgear accessories for the new EDU pile and also the proposal for an entirely new substation, its description and scheme. An evaluation of all proposed versions of Slavětice substation enlargement for connecting new nuclear piles is stated in the outcome of the work.

abstract: This is a two part thesis: Part – I This part of the thesis involves automation of statistical risk analysis of photovoltaic (PV) power plants. Statistical risk analysis on the field observed defects/failures in the PV power plants is usually carried out using a combination of several manual methods which are often laborious, time consuming and prone to human errors. In order to mitigate these issues, an automated statistical risk analysis (FMECA) is necessary. The automation developed and presented in this project generates about 20 different reliability risk plots in about 3-4 minutes without the need of several manual labor hours traditionally spent for these analyses. The primary focus of this project is to automatically generate Risk Priority Number (RPN) for each defect/failure based on two Excel spreadsheets: Defect spreadsheet; Degradation rate spreadsheet. Automation involves two major programs – one to calculate Global RPN (Sum of Performance RPN and Safety RPN) and the other to find the correlation of defects with I-V parameters’ degradations. Based on the generated RPN and other reliability plots, warranty claims for material defect and degradation rate may be made by the system owners. Part – II This part of the thesis involves the evaluation of Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE) which are commercially available and used by the industry. Reliability evaluations of any product typically involve pre-characterizations, many different accelerated stress tests and post-characterizations. Due to time constraints, this part of the project was limited to only pre-characterizations of about 100 MLPE units commercially available from 5 different manufacturers. Pre-characterizations involve testing MLPE units for rated efficiency, CEC efficiency, power factor and Harmonics (Vthd (%) and Ithd (%)). The pre-characterization test results can be used to validate manufacturer claims and to evaluate the product for compliance certification test standards. Pre-characterization results were compared for all MLPE units individually for all tested parameters listed above. The accelerated stress tests are ongoing and are not presented in this thesis. Based on the pre-characterizations presented in this report and post-characterizations performed after the stress tests, the pass/fail and time-to-failure analyses can be carried out by future researchers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Engineering 2015

The thesis first provides a brief introduction to wind energy and bring in the current status of this rapidly growing industry. Further, the distribution of wind turbines, their specific and general description of the construction is described. Emphasis is placed on wind turbine control system. The first goal was to build a simulation model of wind power plant in the MATLAB / Simulink usable for subsequent overall design of control system of wind power plant. Furthermore, the analysis of the control of individual components of power station in the light of the possibility of optimizing the operation and in particular the optimization of efficiency of plant, i.e. maximization of the reached performance is performed. In the last part of this thesis structure and parameters of individual control system of plant is designed and the results are discussed.